Cultivating Resilience: Contributions of Purpose in Life, Metacognition, and Honesty-Humility

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the psychological constructs of Resilience, Purpose in Life, Metacognition, and Honesty-Humility within the Positive Psychology movement(Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).Ganucci Cancellieri, Pacciolla, and Carcione (2014) found significant bivariate correlations among the psychological constructs of Resilience, Metacognition, and Purpose in Lifein an Italian sample. The studies that constitute this dissertation aimto: 1) conceptually replicate the results of Ganucci Cancellieri et al. (2014) in an American sample, and; 2) extendthe work of Ganucci Cancellieri et al. (2014) by examining the relationshipsand predictive power of Purpose in Life, Metacognition, and Honesty-Humility for the outcome variable of Resilience. A sample of 125 adult participants from the United States, recruited through SurveyMonkey Audience, completed the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS;Smith,et al., 2008), the Life Engagement Test(LET;Scheier et al., 2006), the Metacognition Self-Assessment Scale (MSAS;Pedone et al., 2017), and the Honesty-Humility subscale of the HEXACO Personality Inventory – Revised (HH; Ashton & Lee, 2009). Results supported the interrelatedness of Resilience, Purpose in Life, Metacognition, and Honesty-Humility ( r BRS,LET (120) = .47, p <.01; r LET, HH (114) =.23, p < .05; r MSAS,LET (108) =.25, p < .01; r BRS, MSAS (110) =.23, p < .05 ). A multiple regression was performed to investigate whether LET, MSAS, and HH could significantly predict participants’ BRS scores. Purpose in Life (LET) accounted for a significant portion of the variance of Resilience (BRS; R 2 = .246, p <.001), over the added contributions of Metacognition (MSAS)and Honesty-Humility(HH; R 2 = .269, p <.001). The limitations of the study are reviewed, and suggestions for future investigations are made. Potential clinical implications are explored.