– The purpose of this paper is to examine individual differences in people's resilience to changes in psychological distress following the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
– Data were based on a subsample of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) – an annual nation-wide longitudinal study of New Zealand adults that began in 2009. In both waves of the NZAVS examined here, participants completed measures of the Big-Five, psychological distress, and demographic covariates. As such, the analyses, which focus on participants who were living in the Canterbury region before the 2011 earthquake (n=325), use measures of personality collected in late October of 2010 (Time 1) to predict changes in psychological distress after the devastation that unfolded on 22 February 2011.
– Time 1 levels of Emotional Stability were inversely associated with increases in psychological distress following the 2011 earthquake. Psychological distress assessed at Time 1, however, was uncorrelated with changes in Emotional Stability.
– These results show that Emotional Stability protects people against decrements to mental health following a disaster. Thus, efforts to rebuild disaster-stricken communities should ensure that those who are particularly likely to experience increases in psychological distress (i.e. those who, before a disaster, are low on Emotional Stability) receive the help they need.
– This study assesses a subsample of respondents from a longitudinally based national probability study to show that Emotional Stability exerts a cross-lagged effect on changes in psychological distress following a natural disaster. The access to such measures affords us the rare opportunity to explain how people cope in the wake of a catastrophic disaster.
