The team, which was comprised of researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) and New York, wanted to know how people can strengthen their own resilience. To do so, they focused on self-efficacy, or a person’s belief in themself and their abilities.
Someone with high self-efficacy is confident in their ability to get through any situation, and they know they can rely on themselves to succeed. They are also good at problem-solving and emotional regulation, and they tend to have a higher degree of determination or persistence.
For the study, researchers worked with 75 healthy subjects and looked at their responses to negative memories. One group of participants was told to think about a time when they felt self-efficacious, and then instructed to recall the bad memory afterward. The other group was instructed to think about a positive memory that wasn’t related to self-efficacy first.
In the end, the group who was encouraged to think about their capabilities saw a more positive outcome compared to the other group.
After people reflected on their own abilities, they found it easier to reassess a negative situation and look at it from a different perspective.
“They perceived the negative experience as less distressing than the subjects who were instructed to reflect on a positive memory unconnected to self-efficacy,” a professor of psychology at UZH, Brigit Kleim Ph.D., explains in a news release.
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