Final answer:
Resilience is the trait displayed by individuals who can quickly recover from adverse situations. It is associated with better coping abilities, health, and reduced depression, and is seen as a factor in career success. Resilience is linked to evolutionary survival strategies and underpinned by both reactivity and self-regulation.
Step-by-step explanation:
People who are able to recover quickly when bad things happen are displaying the trait of resilience. This psychological trait is crucial for adapting to stress and adversity. Resilience is not only about bouncing back from challenging situations, but also involves building competence and confidence to face future challenges. Those who exhibit resilience are often better able to cope with stress, are healthier, and are less prone to depression than those with an external locus of control. Building resilience can enhance your career success, as it helps you cope with change and overcome obstacles.
Evolutionarily, traits such as the fight or flight response have been naturally selected because they provided survival advantages. Individuals who showed fight or flight behavior were more likely to survive than those without this trait, leading to its incorporation into human lineage. Modern challenges may not require the same survival responses, but the underlying capacity to adapt and recover remains beneficial.
Understanding our temperament, including reactivity and self-regulation, also plays a role in how resilient we may be in the face of adversity. Reactivity is how we respond to new or challenging stimuli, and self-regulation is our ability to control that response. People who can regulate their reactions to stress effectively tend to have a higher level of resilience. Thus, resilience is a trait deeply integrated both into our species' history and into the individual successes we experience in our daily lives.