Beyond resilience: Promotive and protective traits that facilitate recovery during crisis

Resilience functions to promote psychological growth and buffer against the effects of negative events. Individual traits that promote optimal mental health beyond resilience, however, remain poorly understood. The current study addresses this gap through a positive psychology perspective. We examine how promotive traits – courage, optimism, hope, and protective traits – nostalgia, wisdom, and spirituality promote well-being and buffer against negative emotional states. We hypothesized that promotive traits will be positively related to well-being while protective traits will be negatively related to negative emotional states. Six-hundred and twenty-six (626) Malaysians responded to an online survey at the end of the country’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (June-September 2020). We conducted a series of regression analyses, controlling for resilience, socio-economic status, age, and perceptions towards government crisis management efforts. Results indicate that courage, optimism and hope positively predicted well-being. The strongest promotive trait contributing to well-being is hope. Results also showed that the only significant protective trait against negative emotional states is spirituality. Interestingly, nostalgia and wisdom positively predicted negative emotional states. Findings indicate that beyond resilience, courage, optimism, hope and spirituality are the strongest predictors of well-being and protect against negative emotional states amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are of theoretical relevance for resilience and positive psychology research, and practically beneficial in informing mental health interventions.