Hardiness

Hardiness consists of three interrelated belief systems people have about their relationship to their world. Commitment refers to people's ability to find meaning in events that happen to them. People who are high in commitment feel involved in and engaged by events in their lives rather than feeling alienated, disengaged, or disconnected. Control refers to the sense that, through effort, people can influence the world. People who are high in control feel capable of responding to events in their lives rather than helpless. Challenge refers to the belief that to be fulfilled, people must gain wisdom from experience, rather than living a life that is completely safe, secure, and routine. People who are high in challenge tend to view potentially stressful events as opportunities for personal growth, rather than feeling threatened by the world. Hardiness researchers regard these three belief systems as reflecting people's dispositional resilience to the detrimental effects of stressful events as well as their ability to summon courage in the face of adversity.

In the late 1970s, a research team led by Salvatore Maddi and Suzanne Kobasa conducted a longitudinal study of business executives. They were particularly interested in differentiating between executives who thrived under intense stress and those who experienced great personal and performance difficulties. They identified the hardiness belief systems as crucial to maintaining health and performance under stress. For industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists, perhaps the most compelling aspect of their theoretical model was their research-supported contention that hardiness could be taught, which has important practical implications for stress management programs. Maddi and Kobasa's (1984) research stimulated hundreds of studies on hardiness as well as numerous doctoral dissertations. Thus there is a substantial empirical literature from which to draw conclusions about the effects of hardiness on work-related outcomes.