Resilience Facilitates Positive Emotionality And Integration Of Negative Memories In Need Satisfying Memory Networks: An Experimental Study

Resilience has been associated with the capacity to experience positive emotions in the midst of negative life events or following the recall of such events. Apparently, resilient people are able to self-generate those positive emotions because they tend to integrate and associate such past negative life events with other positive past events in memory networks. However, study designs on resilience have remained either cross-sectional or longitudinal. The causal effect of resilience on these outcomes remains to be shown as a third variable or unknown factor could be at play. In this study, we used a resilience intervention from a self-help clinical program to induce resilience and compared this condition against Jacobsontype relaxation and neutralmusic background. Results showed that the resilience intervention increased positive emotionality following the recall of a negative self-defining memory and facilitated the integration of that memory within more positive and need satisfying memory networks.