DIFFERENCES IN LEVEL AND STRUCTURE OF PER SONALITY RESILIENCE (HARDINESS) IN CZECH AND AMERICAN POPULATION SAMPLES

Psychosocial stress has become an inseparable companion of contemporar y man and it may act as the trigger mechanism for what the term ,,chro nic non-infectious diseases'' is used nowadays. However, the same stre ss leads in different subjects to different consequences. The differen ces can be explained to a considerable extent by moderating (mediating ) factors, e.g. certain personality characteristics. Resilience in the sense of ,,hardiness'' is considered to be a characteristic where the capacity to absorb the impact of stressing situations on the health s tatus of man is assumed. To assess the level of hardiness under Czech conditions the Personal Views Survey Questionnaire was translated and verified. In the paper data art presented which were assembled by comp aring the results obtained by assessing the hardiness level in the Cze ch and American population: As compared with the American population s ample, the results of the Czech population sample are significantly lo wer. This pertains to the total hardiness score as well as to Individu al components (challenge, commitment, central). In the View of the mar ked striking differences, in the discussion more attention is paid to the sub-scale of ,,challenge''.