FIGURE 13.2 Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger Psychologist Mark Seery and his colleagues (2010) found that people who had experienced some adversity in their lives handled new stressors better than people who had experienced either a high level of adversity or none at all. After experiencing a significant negative event, they were less distressed and experienced fewer posttraumatic stress symptoms. Even more important, they were generally happier with their lives than people whose lives had been either very hard or relatively carefree.

Source: Data from Seery & others (2010).