Resilience has been something of a watchword during the Covid pandemic, whether on a societal level, an organizational level, or an individual level.  The importance of psychological resilience was underlined by a recent study from West Virginia University, which showed that optimism, self-efficacy, hope, and resiliency can play a crucial role in helping us get through the pandemic.

The researchers wanted to explore how this psychological capital influences the mood and mindset of employees during Covid.  The results unsurprisingly show that those lagging in this demand not only suffered from high-stress levels during Covid but also adopted maladaptive behaviors as a result.

“If you’re adaptively coping, you’re going to have less stress,” the researchers say. “If you have a lower PsyCap, you’re likely going to engage in maladaptive coping, which leads to even greater stress. 

“We wanted to see how these dynamics change if you’re working from home. We felt that working at home would increase the effects of maladaptive coping on stress.”

Ineffective coping mechanisms

Understandably, those who used good adaptive coping strategies tended to fare better than those who did not, but even then, their stress levels were not that much lower.  The authors believe this might be because of additional stressors derived from working at home.

It seems like psychological capital works primarily by reducing our tendency to engage in poor coping strategies rather than necessarily increasing our use of effective strategies.

With work a significant source of stress for many people, the authors believe that building up psychological capital may help, with each of the four elements of psychological capital viewed as a whole rather than individually.

“Do they really hang together as a single concept? The research suggests that if you look at them as a package, you’ll get better outcomes,” they explain.

“A compelling concept from a practical standpoint is that unlike something like your personality, which is relatively stable — you can’t change your personality that easily, PsyCap is something that’s considered to be malleable. It can change and be improved.”