Resilience
Resilience research examines how individuals or systems resist, recover from or successfully adapt to disturbances. Definitions differ across psychological, cognitive and physiological research.
Updated 2026-09-14 · Archived
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At a glance
The capacity to adapt and recover in the face of change.
Resilience research examines how individuals or systems resist, recover from or successfully adapt to disturbances. Definitions differ across psychological, cognitive and physiological research.
To understand resilience, specify the disturbance, the function being observed and the time frame.
Understand the response over time
In older-adult physical-health research, resilience concerns resisting or recovering from functional decline following health stressors. Definitions and measurement remain under development.[1]
Clinical research proposes repeated measurements around a stressor, while a 2026 conceptual review asks for more explicit definitions of the system, perturbation and recovery. These approaches make the question more precise without establishing one universal index.[3][4]
Always name the context
A finding in older adults after a health event cannot automatically define resilience in an athlete or an employee. Sport recovery work likewise emphasises the individual and the demands involved.[1][2]
An observation, not a character verdict
This project does not use resilience as a verdict on willpower. Specify the disturbance, the function and the observation period before discussing how a person or system responds.
Interdisciplinary resilience research also considers family, community and cultural resources. Outcomes should be interpreted alongside demands and support, rather than used alone to judge an individual’s character.[5]
References
- Heather E. Whitson, Wei Duan-Porter, Kenneth E. Schmader, Miriam C. Morey, Harvey J. Cohen, Cathleen S. Colón-Emeric (2016). Physical Resilience in Older Adults: Systematic Review and Development of an Emerging Construct. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glv202
- Michael Kellmann, Maurizio Bertollo, Laurent Bosquet, Michel Brink, Aaron J. Coutts, Rob Duffield, Daniel Erlacher, Shona L. Halson, Anne Hecksteden, Jahan Heidari, K. Wolfgang Kallus, Romain Meeusen, Iñigo Mujika, Claudio Robazza, Sabrina Skorski, Ranel Venter, Jürgen Beckmann (2018). Recovery and Performance in Sport: Consensus Statement. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2017-0759
- Sanne M. W. Gijzel, Heather E. Whitson, Ingrid A. van de Leemput, Marten Scheffer, Dieneke van Asselt, Jerrald L. Rector, Marcel G. M. Olde Rikkert, René J. F. Melis (2019). Resilience in Clinical Care: Getting a Grip on the Recovery Potential of Older Adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.16149
- John Manning, Breanna Morales, Jennifer Yentes (2026). Building an ontology of resilience: Insights from the physical resilience literature. Ageing Research Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2026.103155
- Steven M. Southwick, George A. Bonanno, Ann S. Masten, Catherine Panter-Brick, Rachel Yehuda (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: interdisciplinary perspectives. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338
Publication record
TAP-CON-0006 · v0.2 · English
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