Understanding Resilience and Aggression in Middle Adulthood

Abstract

The ability to be resilient in the face of adversity requires the absence of unhealthy coping behaviors, one of which is aggression. Middle adulthood is the developmental stage of various midlife stressors. Limited data is available with regards to this age group especially in Pakistan. The present study was conducted to determine the relationship between resilience and aggression in middle adulthood. For this purpose, 200 participants (100 men; 100 women) with Mage = 42.67 years & SD = 6.04, from different work places and residential areas of Karachi, Pakistan participated in the study. The Brief Resilience Scale was used to measure resilience whereas aggression was measured using the Short Form of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Pearson product-moment correlation and regression analysis, conducted using the SPSS, indicated the presence of a significant negative correlation between resilience and aggression. This study would help in understanding how resilience and aggression plays a role during middle adulthood. It would further be beneficial for mental health professionals to identify, devise, and implement better ways of enhancing resilience and helping people to deal with adversities in a healthy manner.

Anger and Aggression in Relation to Psychological Resilience and Alcohol Abuse among Health Professionals during the First Pandemic Wave

“…Negative associations were identified between psychological resilience with the three of the aggression subscales, namely hostility, anger, and verbal aggression, which implies that increasing the level of resilience reduces the level of aggression. Among the three correlated with resilience dimensions of aggression, hostility had the strongest negative association with respect to the rest of the other subscales; results that are also supported by other research studies [101,102].…”