Speaker
Description
Resilience is a dynamic process defined as positive adaptation in the face of adversity. Growing research suggests that resilience to adversity is characterized by both the absence of negative outcomes (e.g., psychopathology) and the presence of positive functioning (e.g., satisfaction with life) across multiple behavioral domains, such as psychological well-being, social competency, and academic achievement. However, very few studies have harnessed person-centered methods to characterize individual profiles of resilience in youth across different behavioral domains, and no studies to date have characterized individual profiles of resilience during adolescence. Further, limited research has employed genetically informed designs to explore the environmental vs. genetic origins of distinct domains of resilience. The current study utilized latent profile analysis (LPA) to extract profiles of resilience across the domains of psychiatric, social, and academic functioning in a sample of 704 adolescent twins exposed to neighborhood disadvantage – a pervasive form of early life adversity. Follow-up analyses utilizing the Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (BCH) 3-step method were conducted to explore associations between profile membership and parenting, peer, and neighborhood social processes. Lastly, co-twin control analyses were conducted to explore whether associations between resilience profile membership and social processes were more environmental or genetic in origin. Analyses revealed that youth fell into three distinct resilience profiles: 1) High Multi-domain Resilience (63%), 2) Low Psychological Resilience, High Social Resilience (19%), and 3) Low Multi-domain Resilience (18%). Profiles differed in experiences of parenting (i.e., parental involvement and conflict), peer characteristics (i.e., friend drug-related behaviors and popularity), and neighborhood processes (i.e., social cohesion, informal social control, and positive social norms). Lastly, co-twin control analyses within monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs revealed that the association between parenting and resilience profile membership was primarily environmentally mediated. The current analysis provides a data-driven approach toward refining our understanding of resilience profiles in youth and highlights an environmental mediation in the association between resilience and parenting that may offer a key modifiable pathway for boosting resilience in adolescents exposed to neighborhood disadvantage.
