Chapter 17 Further Reading: Resilience and Bounce-Back — How Lucky People Handle Bad Luck

The resilience research draws from clinical psychology, developmental psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and positive psychology. The readings below cover the foundational research, the most accessible book-length treatments, and the specific areas — post-traumatic growth, counterfactual thinking, social support — that this chapter draws on most directly.

Academic Papers

Seligman, M. E. P. (1972). "Learned helplessness." Annual Review of Medicine, 23(1), 407–412. The original learned helplessness paper, providing the experimental foundation for the explanatory style work discussed in this chapter. Reading this paper makes clear why attribution style is not a soft or motivational concept — it emerges from rigorous animal and human experimental psychology. Available through university library databases.

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). "The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma." Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455–471. The paper introducing the PTG framework and its five domains, along with the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) measurement instrument. Understanding the measurement tool is essential for evaluating subsequent PTG research claims — the specific items reveal what the construct actually captures.

Wortman, C. B., & Silver, R. C. (1989). "The myths of coping with loss." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57(3), 349–357. The landmark critical review challenging the stages model of grief and establishing that resilience trajectories are far more diverse than the cultural script suggests. Relatively short and accessible by academic standards. Essential reading for understanding what recovery from loss actually looks like in the data, as opposed to the popular imagination.

Bonanno, G. A. (2004). "Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events?" American Psychologist, 59(1), 20–28. Bonanno's foundational review paper on resilience trajectories. Introduces the four-trajectory model (resilience, recovery, chronic dysfunction, delayed grief) with large-sample longitudinal data. Establishes that the resilience trajectory — maintaining stable functioning through adversity — is the most common pattern, not the exceptional one. A genuinely important paper.

Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. R. (2003). "What good are positive emotions in crises? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 365–376. The September 11 study described in many resilience discussions: people with higher trait resilience experienced more positive emotions in the weeks following the attacks, and those positive emotions mediated their recovery. This is the core empirical grounding for the broaden-and-build claim that positive emotions during adversity are functional, not avoidant.

Roese, N. J. (1997). "Counterfactual thinking." Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 133–148. The comprehensive review of counterfactual thinking research, covering both upward ("if only") and downward ("at least") counterfactuals and the conditions under which each is functional or harmful. Directly relevant to the chapter's discussion of the "at least" reframe as an emotional floor during adversity.

Werner, E. E. (1989). "High-risk children in young adulthood: A longitudinal study from birth to 32 years." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 59(1), 72–81. Emmy Werner's Kauai longitudinal study — one of the most important in developmental resilience research — followed children born into high-risk conditions over thirty-two years. The finding that roughly one-third of high-risk children became competent, confident, and caring adults established that resilience under adversity is possible and predictable, not exceptional. The protective factors identified — strong social bonds, at least one stable adult relationship, internal locus of control — map directly onto Chapter 17's framework.

Books

Seligman, M. E. P. (1991). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Alfred A. Knopf. The accessible synthesis of Seligman's explanatory style research, including the ABCDE model for identifying and disputing pessimistic attributions. Part One explains the research on permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization; Part Two provides practical tools. One of the most directly useful books in the luck and resilience literature, and unusually well-written for a book grounded in experimental research.

Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S. (2012). Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges. Cambridge University Press. A comprehensive, research-grounded treatment of resilience built around ten identified resilience factors, including optimism, cognitive flexibility, social support, active coping, and meaning-making. Southwick and Charney draw on interviews with trauma survivors alongside the experimental literature. Among the most complete single-volume treatments of resilience science.

Bonanno, G. A. (2021). The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think About PTSD. Basic Books. Bonanno's most recent book, bringing his decades of resilience research to a general audience. Challenges the prevailing view that trauma inevitably produces lasting pathology and presents the trajectory research evidence for the prevalence of natural resilience. Directly challenges the cultural script that treats the absence of visible distress after adversity as suspicious. Compellingly written.

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. The most comprehensive overview of the PTG research program from the researchers who developed it. More technical than the other books on this list but provides the fullest picture of what PTG actually shows — including its limits and the conditions under which growth is and isn't likely.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions. Crown Publishers. Fredrickson's popular treatment of broaden-and-build theory, including her resilience research. Chapters 9–11 address resilience specifically and explain how positive emotions during adversity function as resilience resources rather than avoidance mechanisms. More accessible than the academic papers but faithful to the research.

Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on Happiness. Knopf. Dan Gilbert's research on affective forecasting — specifically, our consistent tendency to overestimate how long and intensely we will suffer after bad events (the "impact bias"). Directly relevant to the chapter's argument that the long time horizon is usually more accurate than the worst-moment prediction. Gilbert is one of the best writers in academic psychology.

Articles and Online Resources

Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S. (1992). Overcoming the Odds: High-Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood. Cornell University Press. The full book-length treatment of Werner's Kauai longitudinal study, extending the analysis beyond the 1989 paper to a 32-year follow-up. More comprehensive than the academic paper and accessible to non-specialists. The protective factors identified across decades of observation are among the most rigorously established findings in resilience research.

Greater Good Science Center — "Resilience" topic collection (greatergood.berkeley.edu) The GGSC maintains an extensive library of research summaries and practical articles on resilience, including tools for identifying and modifying explanatory style and strengthening social support networks. Their self-assessment resources for resilience, positive emotion, and social connection are freely accessible and based on the research discussed in this chapter.

Penn Resilience Program — University of Pennsylvania (ppc.sas.upenn.edu) The Positive Psychology Center's documentation of the Penn Resilience Program, an evidence-based intervention built directly on Seligman's explanatory style research. Includes program descriptions and some publicly available materials for readers who want the structured version of attribution retraining. Widely studied and validated across multiple populations.

A Note on Accessing Academic Papers

Papers published in academic journals are not always freely available online, but most can be accessed through university library systems, Google Scholar (which often links to freely available versions), and ResearchGate, where many researchers post their own work. For older papers, JSTOR's free reading program allows access to a limited number of articles per month without a subscription. Werner's 1989 paper and Wortman and Silver's review are particularly worth tracking down directly.