PSIHOLOŠKA OBZORJA JanekMUSEK Filozofska fakulteta (Faculty of Arts and Sciences), Ljubljana ABSTRACT he aim of the present study was a further clarification of some unresolved problems concerning the theoretical conception of personal hardiness. Two basic questions were examined in our investigation, the first dealing with the inner structure of personal hardiness, and the second dealing with the relationship between personal hardiness and other perso- nality traits. The results of correlational and multivariate analyses showed that personal hardiness is not a unique phenomenon. Most probably, it is composed of three or two rather independent components. Additionally, it has been proved, that the subscales as well as the composite scale of personal hardiness are sigiuficantly related to the source traits of personality. The construct of hardiness: Conceptual issues INTRODUCTION I he research of psychosocial stress and coping processes has increased very strongly in past decades. Recently, a considerable degree of attention has been dedicated to the factors, which have either direct or buffering effects (decreasing or facilitating) on consequences of stressful Hfe events. The research of Kobasa and other authors (Ganellen & Blaney, 1984: Kobasa, 1979,1982; Kobasa, Maddi, & Courington, 1981; Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982; Kobasa, Maddi, & Puccetti, 1982; Kobasa, Maddi, Puccetti, & Zola, 1985; Kobasa, Maddi, & Zola, 1983; Kobasa & Pucetti, 1983; Musek, 1989) demonstrated that the personality dimension called hardiness (or personal hardiness) is responsible for the manner, how people perceive and appraise the stress provoking events and situations and consequently for the success of coping reactions. Personal hardiness evolved as underlying personaUty characteristic which discriminate between individuals with little stress and high negative consequences (illness and others) and individuals with high stress and low negative consequences. Kobasa and co-workers conceived hardiness as a common construct combined of three basic components: commitment, challenge and control. Several scales were used for measurement of these components. In recent research (Kobasa et al., 1981; Kobasa et al., 1982; Kobasa et al., 1983; Kobasa & Puccetti, 1983) the following six scales were accepted as measuring instruments for hardiness: the scale of Alienation From Self and the scale of Alienation From Work as measures for commitment subcomponent; the scale of Security and the Scale of Cognitive Structure as measures for challenge subcomponent (in newer research the last one was often omitted); the scale of Powerlessness and the scale of External Locus of Control for control subcomponent (see Table 1). Combined and standardized subjects' scores on these six scales were then taken to constitute the composite score on single hardiness dimension. Table 1. The components and test measures (subscales) of personal hardiness. COMPONENT SUBSCALE Commitment Alienation from Self Alienation from Work Challenge Security Coqnitive Structure Control Powerlessness External Control There are some theoretical as well as methodological questions relating to the construct of hardiness which remained unresolved up to now. Although based on the retrospective data, the concept of hardiness showed itself as a promising one, because it also seems to have a considerable predictive value for prognosing many stress-related behavior patterns. It is questionable however, how hardiness is involved in such behavior: some studies indicate that it has indirect effect by buffering the impact of stressful life-events (Kobasa, 1979; Kobasa & Puccetti, 1983), but some other authors claimed that lack of control and commitment could have direct effects on psychophysical health because it is per se psychologically stressful and that the evidence for buffering effects of hardiness is weak (Funk & Houston, 1987; Hull, Van Treuren, & Vimelli, 1987). The very concept of hardiness is still under critique. There is an open question, whether hardiness is an unique phenomenon at all. Kobasa and coworkers already dropped the scale of Cognitive Structure for its failure to be loaded on the general factor of hardiness (Kobasa et al., 1982). A number of investigators failed to confirm the existence of common general factor of hardiness in their factor analyses of composite scales of hardiness (Funk & Houston, 1987; Hull, Van Treuren, & Vimelli, 1987). Some researchers obtained only moderate correlations between subscales of hardiness and found other indications for essential mutual independence of them (Ganellen & Blaney, 1984; Rich & Rich, 1985; Schlosser & She-eley, 1985). According to these results and considerations it would be probably more appropriate to use the hardiness subscales separately and independently. HORIZONS OF PSYCHOLOGY The aim of the present study was to clarify some of the issues mentioned before. First, we attempted to get more insight into the inner structure of hardiness itself, espe-daUy into the nature of relationships between subscales of hardiness as well into the relationship between sub-scales and the composite scale of hardiness. Second, we attempted to analyze the relationship between hardiness and primary traits of personality in order to obtain the insight into the location of hardiness and its components in the dimensionality of personality structure. Finally, we attempted to compare the relative contributions of integral and separated measures of hardiness in relation to the dimensions of personality. METHOD! Subjects. 70 subjects from 4. class of high school participated in the study. They were predominantly female (only 5 male subjects were included). The age of the subjects was between 17 and 18 years. Design of study. The study was programmed as correlational multivariate research. The variables representing personal hardiness (measiu'ed by composite scale of hardiness and 6 subscales: Alienation From Self, Alienation From Work, Security, Powerlessness, Cognitive Structure, and External Control) and dimensions of persona-Ety (16 primary factors of personality) were entered into correlational design. Measuring instruments. Hardiness was measured by Personal Hardiness Scale, constructed by Kobasa et al. (1982). The scale contains 6 subscales: Alienation From Self, Alienation From Work, Security, Powerlessness, Cognitive Structure, and External Control. The scoring procedure for the subscales was modified in that manner, that high scores of each subscale indicated high value for hardiness.Personality traits or dimensions were measured by Cattell's 16 PF inventory, containing 16 primary factors of personality (so called "source traits", representing basic styEstic patterns of personality). Procedure. Both instruments were administered anonymously to the subjects in two respective classes of high school. The results of subjects were then collected and prepared for further analyses. Various kinds of correlational and multivariate analyses were performed including factor analyses, cluster analyses and multidimensional scaling procedures. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The structure of hardiness According to the findings of some investigators, the conception of hardiness as a unitary phenomenon is highly questionable (Funk & Houston, 1987; Hull, Van Treuren, & VirnelU, 1987; Rich & Rich, 1985; Schlosser & Sheeley, 1985). Thus, the first step in our analyses was an attempt to provide further clarification concerning that issue. Table 2 shows the correlations between six hardiness subscales. By inspection we can see that both measures of commitment (Alienation From Self and Alienation From Work) correlated significantly, but, surprisingly they correlated also with the measure of control, Powerlessness, which in turn showed not substantial correlation with other measure of control. External control! Powerlessness also correlated negatively with one of challe- nge measures. Cognitive Structure. Other correlations are insignificant. The correlations of single subscales with composite scores of hardiness are moderate or low, with exception of Security scale, which does not correlate significantly. Table 2. Correlations between subscales and composite score of hardiness. o o ••5 S .i i Z3 O ë E o ca .i= 0 o ¦5 i 1 i ta .t= >. 3 S i g |s il o oy <0 — c o B 8 Qď '« g. E o o A .1975 .2153 .1336 .2694 -.0351 -.1889 .1175 B -.0209 .0307 -.0557 -.0107 .0310 -.1697 -.0978 C .1948 .3576* .0437 .2215 -.0829 .3538* .4205** E -.1205 -.0522 .1989 -.0373 .1171 -.3504* -.1962 F .1847 .0443 -.1204 .1557 -.0475 .0107 .0987 G .3259* .1754 -.1480 .1071 -.1287 .2692 .2734 H .2600 .2245 .0656 .2787* -.1859 .0647 .2248 1 .1320 .1297 -.2300 -.0313 .1136 .2189 .1966 L -.2038 -.1756 .1258 -.0413 -.2051 -.2190 -.3071* M -.1001 .0151 -.0219 -.0345 .0709 -.1850 -.1243 N -.4116** -.4224** .1437 -.2281 -.0415 -.3180* -.5023** 0 -.0977 -.1774 -.0805 .0098 -.1615 -.2022 -.2605 Q1 -.0322 .0178 .0670 -.1571 -.0921 .0770 -.0448 Q2 -.4097" -.2942* -.0336 -.2961* .1240 -.2313 -.4095** Q3 .3329* .2676 -.0821 .1231 -.0300 .4005** .4281** Q4 -.1637 -.2552 -.0097 -.2632 .2976* -.2495 -.2565 NOTE 1-tailed Signit *-.01 "-.001 The most informative insight into relationship between both sets of our variables, personality dimensions and hardiness subscales, could be obtained by further multivariate analyses. Thus, the canonical factor analysis was performed in order to reveal latent dimensions (canoni- cal variâtes) which should account for the variance between two sets. First canonical variate proved to be significant, extracting more than 17 percent of variance for personality traits and even about 25 percent of variance for hardiness traits. As Table 6 shows, this canonical factor connects personality traits naivete (-N), self-control (Q3), ego-strength (C), group orientation (-Q2), superego-strength (G), confidence (-L), submissiveness (-E) and low frustration (-Q4) with hardiness components of commitment (Alienation from Self and Alienation from Work) and of control (Internal Control). The second canonical variate explained only six percent of variance for personaUty traits, but more than 20 percent for hardiness traits. This canonical factor associates ergic tension (Q4), low parmia (shyness, -H), and eventually sizia (-A) and self-sufficiency (Q2) positively with Cognitive Structure and negatively with Powerlessness and Security. It may be concluded from these results that hardiness is connected with quite a number of basic personality traits. That is tme for single subscales of hardiness as well as for the composite score of hardiness. The most significant correlations between personality and hardiness dimensions are not high, however, but in the whole, as regression analyses show, the impact of multiple compositions of personality traits on hardiness components as well on single hardiness subscales is quite substantial (multiple correlations reaching the values about 0.65 and even higher). Table 6 Canonical factors between two sets of variables: personality traits and hardiness subscales. Variables Factor stmctu re Rooti Root 2 First set: (Personalitviraitt ¦) a .04726 -.34281 b -.12746 .02048 c .57134 -.29265 e -.39661 -.01388 f .14761 -.04820 Q .50442 -.08868 h .28927 -.43846 i .36326 .29129 1 -.42664 -.30828 m -.19376 .04963 n -.73731 .02826 0 -.32267 -.14074 q1 .03609 -.07247 q2 -.56073 .31838 q3 .66698 -.02565 q4 -.39499 .54111 0 -.32267 -.14074 q1 .03609 -.07247 q2 -.56073 .31838 q3 .66698 -.02565 04 -.39499 .54111 Second set: (Hardiness subscales) alienation from self .68576 -.06135 alienation from work .62954 -.24325 security -.15840 -.38394 powerlessness .31695 -.57527 coqnitive structure .06231 .82239 external control .69085 .02260 PSIHOLOŠKA OBZORJA GENERAL CONCLUSIONS Finally, we can resume the conclusions from our investigations as follows: 1. Personal hardiness is probably not a unique phenomenon. The structtural analyses of this construct reveal rather independent components, three for six scales solution and two for five scales solution. 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