Psychological Resilience Factors and Their Association with Weekly Stressor Reactivity During the Covid-19 Outbreak in Europe
Abstract: Background: Cross-sectional relationships between psychosocial resilience factors (RFs) and resilience, operationalized as the outcome of low mental health reactivity to stressor exposure (low "stressor reactivity" [SR]), were reported during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Objective: Extending these findings, we here examined prospective relationships and weekly dynamics between the same RFs and SR in a longitudinal sample during the aftermath of the first wave in several European countries. Methods: Over 5 weeks of app-based assessments, participants reported weekly stressor exposure, mental health problems, RFs, and demographic data in 1 of 6 different languages. As (partly) preregistered, hypotheses were tested cross-sectionally at baseline (N=558), and longitudinally (n=200), using mixed effects models and mediation analyses. Results: RFs at baseline, including positive appraisal style (PAS), optimism (OPT), general self-efficacy (GSE), perceived good stress recovery (REC), and perceived social support (PSS), were negatively associated with SR scores, not only cross-sectionally (baseline SR scores; all P.001) but also prospectively (average SR scores across subsequent weeks; positive appraisal (PA), P=.008; OPT, P.001; GSE, P=.01; REC, P