From social traditions to personalized routines: Maintenance goals as a resilience factor

Abstract

We identified and tested a novel aspect of human resilience: The daily pursuit of maintenance goals. Taking inspiration from archaeological records, which point at routinized cultural practices as a central resilience factor, we tested whether personal routine practices, governed by maintenance goals, serve a similar function to individuals as traditional practices do to societies. Namely, we hypothesized that maintenance striving increases individuals’ resilient responses to stressful events. Confirming this prediction, a longitudinal Study 1 showed that maintenance striving but not avoidance striving, predicted subsequent increases in well-being following the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Study 2 confirmed our predictions on trait resilience and maintenance versus avoidance motivations in the household and relationship life domains in cross-sectional data. These studies contribute to the understanding of resilience by demonstrating the benefits of maintenance goals for both situational and trait-level resilience.