Pe rso n. ind iuid . D@ Vol. 9. No. 4, pp. 785-790, 1988 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-8869 88 63.00 + 0.00 Copyright C 1988Pcrgamon Press plc THE HARDY PERSONALITY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO EXTRAVERSION AND NEUROTICISM K. R. PARKES and D. RENDALL Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, England zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfed (Receiued 7 August 1987) Summary-Hardiness is conceptualised as a personality characteristic which encompasses three com- ponent traits (commitment, challenge and control), and acts as a resistance resource mitigating the adverse effects of stressful life events (Kobasa, 1979). A number of empirical studies in the U.S. have demonstrated its role in moderating stress-illness relationships, but hardiness has not received much attention in the U.K. In the present article, data from a U.K. sample (IV = 87) are used to examine (i) the psychometric characteristics of the current version of Kobasa’s hardiness measure, and (ii) the relationships of hardiness, and its component scales, to the Eysenck dimensions of extraversion, neuroticism and the lie scale. Hardiness scores were found to be negatively related to age, but did not differ significantly between males and females, and were not influenced by social desirability biases. The alpha value for the reliability of the overall scale was 0.89. Scores on the components of commitment, challenge and control were strongly related to extraversion (positively) and to neuroticism (negatively), the canonical correlation being 0.60. Multiple regression analysis showed that age, gender and the Eysenck dimensions jointly accounted for 37% of the variance in hardiness scores. These results are discussed in relation to psychometric issues and relevant literature findings. Over-the past decade, the concept of the “hardy personality”, originally developed by Kobasa (1979), has made a considerable impact on the research literature relating to stress, coping and health. Hardiness has been described as “a constellation of personality characteristics that function as a resistance resource in the encounter with stressful life events” (Kobasa, Maddi and Kahn, 1982). Thus, hardiness is conceptualised as a moderator of relations between life stress and health; individuals high in hardiness are less likely than those low in hardiness to show impaired mental or physical health in response to stress. Empirical evidence tends to confirm the moderating role of hardiness in mitigating the adverse effects of life stress (Kobasa et al., 1982; Kobasa, Maddi and Puccetti, 1982; Rhodewalt and Agustdottir, 1984), although some research has shown additive, rather than interactive, effects of stress and hardiness on well-being (Kobasa, Maddi and Courington, 1981). The three components which jointly form the construct of hardiness are commitment (a tendency to involve oneself in whatever one is doing, a sense of purpose, and a capacity to persist under pressure); challenge (a capacity to respond to change as a potential stimulus to growth rather than as a threat); and control (a tendency to perceive oneself as able to influence events and outcomes through the exercise of choice, knowledge and skill) (Kobasa, 1979; Kobasa er al., 1982). Hardiness is seen as more than the sum of these parts; Kobasa and her colleagues suggest that the psychological resilience characteristic of the hardy individual is not due solely to the individual effects of the three components, but to the particular styles of coping associated with the dynamic combination of these traits (Kobasa et al., 1981). However, in contrast to this view of hardiness as a single construct which subsumes and integrates its component parts, some studies have reported significant main or interactive effects only for individual components within the composite hardiness measure (Ganellen and Blaney, 1984; Kobasa, 1982; Schmied and Lawler, 1986). Kobasa’s emphasis on the positive and adaptive aspects of personality rather than with the nature and causes of maladaptive responses, that is, with resilience rather than vulnerability, has generated considerable research interest in the U.S. This interest is reflected in the high frequency of citations (as reported by Perlman, 1984) for the article in which the concept of hardy personality was initially described (Kobasa, 1979). However, to date, the notion of hardiness has received relatively little attention in the U.K. In considering the potential relevance of Kobasa’s hardiness measure to stress research in this country, a number of psychometric questions arise. 785