Date of Award

Spring 5-2022

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

Advisor/Committee Chair

Jason Randall

Committee Member

Ho Kwan Cheung

Abstract

Amongst those most negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and other harmful events we find many examples of individuals who are able to “bounce back” from their adversities more easily than others. This reflects the concept of resilience—the process of positively adapting and evolving during and after experiencing adversity thereby becoming less vulnerable to future adversity. Due to a need to build resilience among college students, and without clear guidance as to how to do that, the present study investigated the effects of a resilience intervention. 232 college student participants were assigned to either an experimental group, who received the resilience training immediately after entering the study, or a waitlist control group, who received the resilience training after four weeks of entering the study. I assessed levels of psychological resilience, empathy, psychological well-being, and university satisfaction at three different time points to evaluate the change in these outcomes as the result of the resilience intervention. Knowledge and training reactions were also assessed. Although the results failed to find support for the intervention in terms of increasing resilience and the other outcomes of interest, there were significant associations between all study variables, suggesting that there may yet be a way for resilience to impact individuals’ empathy, psychological well-being, and university satisfaction. I discuss the limitations and implications of these findings for the scientific study of resilience, but also for their potential contributions in equipping individuals with the skills they need to adapt and evolve from their current challenges to become less vulnerable in the future.

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