PsyCh Journal (2021) DOI: 10.1002/pchj.467 Resilience personality profiles among Swedish long-term unemployed Alexandre Granjard,1,2,3 Danilo Garcia ,1,4,5,6,7 Patricia Rosenberg,4,7 Christian Jacobsson,1 Kevin M. Cloninger,2,8,9 and Claude Robert Cloninger1,2,9,10 Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2Anthropedia 1 Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 3Promotion of Health and Innovation (PHI) Lab, Network for Well-Being, France, 4Blekinge Center of Competence, Karlskrona, Blekinge, Sweden, 5Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, 6Centre for Ethics, Law and Mental Health (CELAM), University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden, 7Promotion of Health and Innovation (PHI) Lab, Network for Well-Being, Sweden, 8College for Public Health and Justice, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 9Promotion of Health and Innovation (PHI) Lab, Network for Well-Being, USA, 10Center for Well-Being, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA Abstract: Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of resilience personality profiles in a sample of Swedish long-term unemployed in relation to the general Swedish population. We found that only 1.50% (vs. 26% in the general population) in the long-term unemployed sample had a resilient personality profile, that is, low in harm avoidance (e.g., relaxed and optimistic), high in persistence (e.g., hardworking), and high in self-directedness (i.e., goal-oriented and resourceful). Keywords: character; long-term unemployment; personality; resilience; temperament Correspondence Alexandre Granjard, Göteborgs Universitet, Box 100, SE 405 30, Göteborg, Sweden. Email: alexandre.granjard. beolet@gmail.com; or Dr. Danilo Garcia, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, SE 581 83, Linköping, Sweden. Email: danilo.garcia@icloud.com Received 12 January 2021. Accepted 28 April 2021. Long-term unemployment (i.e., ≥6 months without work) is associated with health problems and 37% higher risk of suicide (McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, & Kinicki, 2005). In this context, personality and resilience are related to overall well-being, longevity, and both employability and workability (McGee, Windle, Cooper, & Thompson, 2020; Roberts et al., 2007). Importantly, Cloninger (2004) explains resilience as the result of a specific biopsychosocial personality configuration: low levels in the temperament trait of harm avoidance (i.e., being optimistic, self-confident, and relaxed/ calm), high levels in the temperament trait of persistence (i.e., being perseverant, hard-working, and industrious), and high levels in the character trait of self-directedness (i.e., being self-acceptant, goal-oriented, resourceful, responsible, and dependable). To the best of our knowledge, only limited research, if any, has examined resilience personality profiles among long-term unemployed (cf. Eley et al., 2013). Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of resilience personality profiles in a sample of Swedish longterm unemployed in relation to the general Swedish population. The study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Dnr. 2016/618 and Dnr. 2018/788) as part of the Promotion of Health and Innovation (PHI) program conducted between 2016 and 2020 in Blekinge, Sweden. The original cohort consisted of 689 unemployed individuals who participated in the different well-being and employment projects within the program. From this population, we © 2021 The Authors. PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. 2 Resilience personality profiles recruited 293 individuals (136 men and 157 women; age range, 18–60 years, M = 25.7 years, SD = 9.6 years) with the criterion of long-term unemployment or lack of occupation (>6 months or more) before registering in the projects. All participants reported gender, age, other basic demographics, and self-reported their personality through the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). The TCI version used here (TCI-3; https://anthropedia.org) contains 240 items with a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) to measure the traits in Cloninger’s biopsychosocial personality model (Cloninger et al., 1993). A total of 205 participants (70%) answered Figure 1. Prevalence (percentiles) of resilience personality profiles among 205 Swedish long-term unemployed (yellow) and 1,948 individuals from the general Swedish population (blue). H/h = high/low harm avoidance; P/p = high/low persistence; S/s = high/low self-directedness. © 2021 The Authors. PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. PsyCh Journal correctly to at least three of five validity questions and were therefore included in subsequent analyses, in which we used the answers measuring harm avoidance (e.g., “I often feel tense and worried in unfamiliar situations, even when others feel there is little to worry about”; Cronbach’s alpha = .93), persistence (e.g., “I often push myself to the point of exhaustion or try to do more than I really can”; Cronbach’s alpha = .91), and self-directedness (e.g., “In most situations my natural responses are based on good habits that I have developed”; Cronbach’s alpha = .87). We calculated the percentiles (i.e., each individual’s rank order in the general population) for each trait using the Swedish normative data (N = 1,948) in order to cluster the long-term unemployed population (Swedish general population in brackets) in the different profiles (high/low harm avoidance: H/h; high/low persistence: P/p; and high/low self-directedness: S/s): 67.80% [23.90%] fragile (Hps), 2.00% [6.30%] conscientious (HPS), 3.40% [7.20%] laidback (hps), 12.70% [10.00%] perfectionistic (HPs), 2.4% [8.10%] happy-go-lucky (hPs), 9.30% [7.40%] high-Strung (HpS), 1.00% [11.20%] clever (hpS), and only 1.50% [26.00%] resilient (hPS). See Figure 1. Besides the large differences in the fragile (Hps: 67.80% vs. 23.90%) and resilient (hPS: 1.50% vs. 26.00%) profiles, it is important to notice that about 81% of the long-term unemployed had a personality profile denoted by low resilience and with high risk for ill-being (i.e., fragile, Hps, or perfectionistic, HPs). Thus, most individuals in this population described themselves as worrying, pessimistic, fearful, doubtful, shy, and low in energy (i.e., high harm avoidance) as well as lacking purpose, feeling ineffective, unreliable, and highly self-critical (low selfdirectedness); and at the same time as being either hard-working, industrious, perseverant, and perfectionistic (high persistence) or underachievers (low persistence). Furthermore, only 14% (vs. 44%) reported high levels of self-directedness (i.e., conscientious, HPS, high-strung, HpS, clever, hpS, and resilient, hPS). Indeed, past research shows that traits related to both persistence and self-directedness are positively associated with a person’s employability (Qureshi, Wall, Humphries, & Bahrami Balani, 2016) and workability (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998; Gottschling, Hahn, Maas, & Spinath, 2016). However, our study adds an important insight by showing the high predictive value of the TCI for distinguishing the long-term unemployed from the general population and by showing that high persistence can be as selfdefeating as low persistence (Cloninger, 2004) when the individual has difficulties in letting go or listening to body signals of 3 exhaustion (i.e., low self-directedness). Moreover, like other personality models, our approach describes this population, but it also explains why they might have difficulties finding, getting, and maintaining employment. Nevertheless, our cross-sectional study needs replication using longitudinal designs. Besides the need for stress-reduction, we identified personal resources that need to be promoted for individuals to deal successfully with unemployment and other challenges in the 21st century. Hence, both long-term unemployed and those with employment should benefit from evidence-based interventions that target stress-reduction and promote goaldirectedness, resourcefulness, purposefulness, and selfacceptance. After all, a resilient individual grows positively and develops fewer burnout symptoms, even after adverse experiences (Cloninger, 2004; Eley et al., 2013). Disclosure of conflict of interest The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest. Acknowledgments The projects were funded by the European Social Fund (Dnr. 2017/00558) and Finsam Blekinge as a collaboration between Region Blekinge, Blekinge’s Five Municipalities, Anthropedia Foundation, the Swedish Employment Service, and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 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