Through the tunnel, to the light: Why sense of coherence covers and exceeds resilience, optimism, and self-compassion

Abstract Sense of coherence (SOC), resilience, dispositional optimism, and self-compassion are highly related aspects of personality that promote health and well-being. We systematically compared these constructs and explored their criterion validity when predicting psychological distress. With the help of structural equation modeling, we examined SOC's factor structure and incremental validity over resilience ( N 1  = 208) as well as over optimism and self-compassion ( N 2  = 308) in two studies. Despite strong overlap (shared variance) SOC clearly outperformed its competitors. Neither resilience, nor optimism, nor self-compassion had significant incremental validity over SOC on a latent level. A two-factor model for SOC explained most variance in psychological distress. Results highlight the importance of salutogenic factors even in a neck-to-neck comparison with other potentially health-benefitting personality variables. Meaningfulness appears to contribute to SOC's uniqueness.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Personality and Individual Differences

• Publication date

  2016-08-01

• Fields of study

  Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.PAID.2016.04.001
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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