Abstract

Psychological resilience is typically understood to involve a complex series of processes or behaviors that together contribute to high or normative levels of functioning within the context of highly aversive events. After decades of research, we now know convincingly that resilience is both common (Bonanno, 2004) and multi-faceted (Bonanno, Brewin, Kaniesty, & LaGreca, 2010). However, in this chapter, we propose that many processes commonly associated with resilient outcomes (e.g. adaptive coping and appraisals, supportive relationships) are those that are inherently influenced by emotion and, in particular, are likely grounded in flexible emotion processing. As such, we focus here on the constructs of emotion flexibility, examining links between emotion flexibility and psychological risk and resilience, providing evidence of the underlying neuro-anatomy and circuitry, and discussing influential factors and related research issues.