Masten – study of resilience 2

And then the fourth wave is kind of a tidal wave, because the fourth wave has been, is occurring because we’ve had all these advances in technologies for studying how the brain works, how biology works, how genetics work, and also the kind of statistical methods, you know that able us to study the complex dynamics that are involved in the study of resilience, and what’s happening is a rapid transformation in the research where you have an interest in what might be called multiple levels of process where you try to understand, you know, what’s going on when you have one of these protective processes, how does good parenting get into the child, into the functioning- the biology, the neurology, of this child, what happens between a parent saying or doing something and a child’s immune system working better in the context of adversity.  

So there’s a lot of interest in linking what’s going on from a very molecular level, where people study processes of genetics and epigenetics, to a neural level, where people are trying to understand well, how do protective systems like cognitions or self-control actually work in there- can we observe it through brain imaging or other kinds of techniques, and how is that related to the behaviour then that we see as we observe resilience in a child. And there’s increasing interest in the interactions, the dynamics of how people interact with each other and how that works to promote resilience.  

So it isn’t just all in the organism, there are people who are very, very interested in how people interact in families, how children interact in peer groups that promotes, or doesn’t, resilience in individuals, so I think we’re going to see a lot of new work trying to link across these levels, and that’s going to take collaboration because people are complicated, and their lives are complicated and it’s hard to have the expertise on more than maybe one or two levels, and so what we’re seeing is multiple disciplines getting together to understand across levels how resilience works and some of these levels are very large systems.  

So people who study disasters for example, want to know not just how resilience works at an individual or family level, but can we link it to the functioning of a large area effected by disaster, how are humans interacting with ecosystems in resilience across the planet? So, there’s a lot of integrative work going on, and people are trying to, you know, integrate their theories and ideas about resilience. When I define resilience now, I try and keep in mind that I want to be able to communicate with people from other disciplines, so I might say, you know, resilience refers to the capacity of a dynamic system to withstand or recover from serious threats and disturbances to that system. That kind of definition could be used by somebody at a molecular level, or by somebody who studies ecosystems, and I think that’s a very important part of this new wave.