From Social Traditions To personalized Routines: Maintenance Goals as a Resilience Factor

We identified and tested a novel aspect of human resilience: The daily pursuit of maintenance goals. Humankind is continuously confronted with challenges to the wellbeing of individuals. In recent decades, climate change, the covid-19 pandemic, and wars have threatened the lives of millions around the globe. While the novel nature of some of these challenges seems to call for novel solutions, human resilience is based on an old toolset. Archeological records point at routinized cultural practices as a central resilience factor. Following this insight, 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 shows that maintenance striving predicts subsequent increase in wellbeing following a COVID-19 wave. Study 2 confirms our predictions on trait resilience in cross-sectional data.