Cross-cultural Analysis of Resilience, Satisfaction with Life, Coping Styles and Personality Traits: Ireland; Israel; The Netherlands

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the demographic traits of individuals from Ireland, Israel and The Netherlands to see how they are related to resilience and Satisfaction with Life. Does being Dutch mean that you dwell on the issues, but had you been born/raised in Israel you might be better able to use your innate strengths and newly acquired skills to better cope with traumatic events? This as a correlational cross-sectional quantitative design looking to explore how personality trait, coping style, age, gender, military/police front line exposure and exercise interact with resilience and Satisfaction with Life across three countries. Five self-administered questionnaires were distributed via Kwiksurveys.com to a convenience sample of participants (n=184) consisting of females and males from Ireland, Israel and The Netherlands/Holland. A few relationships were found between the predictors and resilience, chiefly gender with females scoring higher than males and three of the fourteen coping strategies: Venting, Religion and the strongest influence was Self Blame. There appears to be no significant relationship between those who had experienced front-line duty and resilience. Self Blame was also a predictor of Satisfaction with Life, with Neuroticism a close second and gender also was a predictor, with males scoring higher than females. Israel scored higher on resilience than Ireland or The Netherlands, which scored lowest. Author Keywords: resilience, satisfaction with life, coping, personality