Although more research is needed on this issue, there is now sufficient evidence to support the view that leaders can increase high-hardiness response patterns within their organizations, and to provide a preliminary sketch of how the high-hardy leader behaves in order to influence hardiness and stress resilience in the organization.
Flies were selected in the laboratory for high (hardy) or low (susceptible) cold hardiness (Williams et al., unpublished results).
In particular, leaders who are high in hardiness themselves can exert substantial influence on those around them to process stressful experiences in ways characteristic of high hardy persons.
The authors suggested that high hardy persons may be less stress-reactive, and that although basal levels of HPA hormones may be somewhat elevated, hardiness is associated with less volatility in reaction to stressors.
Under low-stress conditions, those high in hardiness are fairly similar to those low in hardiness in terms of health, in this case PTSD symptoms.
Figure 2 Stress X Hardiness interaction effect in Gulf War soldiers (N = 824), with Combat Stress Exposure predicting PTSD symptoms for low and high hardy groups.
Contrada took the additional step of examining the hardiness facets of Commitment, Control and Challenge, determining that the Challenge facet accounted for the lower DBP reactivity in the high hardy subjects.
Here, those high in hardiness report significantly fewer PTSD symptoms than those low in hardiness (PTSD symptoms measured by the Impact of Events Scale;[28]).
This pattern of results suggests that persons high in hardiness are less reactive on a physiological/endocrinological level to stress, as compared to their low hardiness counterparts, who display more extreme reactions.
People who score high in hardiness appear to have high levels of commitment toward the things they do, a strong need to control the events around them, and a willingness to accept challenges.
While these findings do not demonstrate causal directionality, it may be that the mental processes employed by people high in hardiness are influencing distal bodily functions including cholesterol metabolism.
