Adolescent Resilience in Lebanon: The Roles of Personality, Parenting, and their Interaction

Abstract

Lebanon recently witnessed severe and overlapping crises, which has increased the risk of psychopathology and amplified the need for psychological resilience, particularly in vulnerable populations like adolescents. Resilience, the capacity to tolerate and bounce back from adversity, is influenced by various individual and environmental factors. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory, this study investigated how adolescents’ personality—measured through the Big Five traits and Schwartz’s personal values within the Neo-Socioanalytic Model—and parenting practices, specifically parental warmth and psychological control, predict resilience. We also explored interactive effects between personality and parenting. Data was collected from 416 parent–child dyads residing in Lebanon using convenience and snowball sampling as part of a bigger project funded by Doha International Family Institute. Parental warmth and psychological control were reported by the parents, while personality traits, values, and resilience were reported by the adolescents. Multiple regression models were run using SPSS, and moderation analyses were conducted using the macro extension. We found that adolescents’ personality traits and values significantly predicted resilience, while parenting practices did not significantly predict resilience. Moreover, only the interaction terms of each of neuroticism and conscientiousness with resilience were significant. Additional hierarchical regression analyses showed that adolescents’ personality explained significant variance in resilience, while the contribution of parenting to predicted variance was negligible. Our findings support an independent effects model with respect to the relations of personality and parenting with resilience. The negligible relation of parenting on resilience compared to adolescents’ personality can be understood from a developmental lens (i.e., adolescence as a period of individuation) or using gene-environment correlations (i.e., child personality shapes parenting responses). It is implied that interventions aimed at volitional personality change might support resilience-building during adolescence.