Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Ester Navarro Garcia

Second Advisor

Wilson H McDermut

Abstract

Psychological Hardiness is a resilience personality trait with extensive empirical evidence of its combative effects against stress (Bartone et al., 2008; Oliver, 2009; Johnsen et al., 2013). However, the cognitive processes underlying this skill are not well understood. Understanding the mechanisms of resiliency is imperative for all human persons to succeed, especially those involved in high-stress occupations. This study will investigate the relationship between working memory capacity and psychological hardiness, as well as assess stress and motivation as potential moderating variables. We hypothesized that 1) Higher vs. Lower levels of working memory capacity (WMC) will predict higher levels of Hardiness, 2) The experimental condition (i.e., stress) will moderate the relationship between WMC and Hardiness, specifically: in the high stress condition, those with high levels of WMC and Hardiness are expected to outperform those in the no stress condition, 3) Higher scores of source motivation will predict high Hardiness scores, regardless of stress or WMC. 30 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to either a stress condition or an active control condition. Psychological Hardiness (Disposition Resilience Scale, DRS-15), motivation (Motivation Sources Inventory, MSI), stress (induced via auditory stressor), and WMC (automatized complex span tasks) were utilized. Results show that WMC significantly predicted a decline in Hardiness scores, and that motivation significantly predicted Hardiness scores positively. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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