Personality Traits as the Predictors of Resilience among Adolescents: Evidence from the Big-5 Personality Model

Description

Noor Glory and Karneet Kaur Sethi (Department of Psychology, DAVC-10 Chandigarh, India)

Despite the fact that personality has been repeatedly found to be a significant factor of resilience, the relative contribution of the Big-5 personality traits among Indian adolescents has not received much attention. In order to determine the best personality predictors of resilience, the current study investigated the relationship between resilience and the Big-5 personality traits. A sample of 114 adolescents (males=65, females=49) age ranged between 15-19 years were included in a cross-sectional study. The Big-5 Inventory (John et al., 2008) and the Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008) were completed by the respondents. Cronbach’s alpha, descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlations, and multiple linear regression were used to analyze the data. Although the “openness to experience” subscale showed comparatively poor reliability, still the results suggest an acceptable internal consistency for the majority of study variable. Correlation analyses revealed that resilience was positively related with extraversion (p.001) and conscientiousness (p.005), whereas showing a strong negative relationship with neuroticism (p< .001). Further, multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that the Big-5 personality traits collectively explained 35.5% of the variance in resilience. Neuroticism was found to be the sole significant predictor among the personality variables (β = −.532, p <.001). However, after adjusting for shared variance, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to new experiences did not significantly contribute. These findings indicate that emotional stability is a crucial psychological factor that promotes adolescent resilience. The study highlights the need of combining personality-driven techniques, particularly methods that target emotional regulation and neurotic tendencies, into school and community-based resilience building programs.