Sex differences in hardiness, coping, and health in new West Point cadets

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point places young men and women in a highly demanding world of extreme mental and physical challenges. As such, it provides an excellent natural laboratory in which to study how people respond and adapt to highly stressful conditions. The present study explores the role of personality hardiness and coping as stress resilience resources in new (freshmen) cadets at West Point, while also considering sex differences. Using survey methods, N = 234 cadets were assessed during their first year at West Point. Measures included personality hardiness, coping strategies, health symptoms, and number of hospitalizations for all causes. Results show that female cadets are higher in hardiness and emotion-focused coping, as well as somewhat higher in symptoms reports. For the total group, hardiness is linked to better health, both in terms of symptoms reports and hospitalizations. Multiple regression results indicate symptoms are predicted by lower hardiness, higher avoidance coping, and female sex. Conditional process path analysis reveals that the effect of hardiness on symptoms is mediated by emotion-focused coping, and that emotion-focused coping can have both positive and negative effects. This study confirms hardiness is an important stress resilience resource for both men and women in the highly stressful first year at West Point. These findings lend further support to a growing body of evidence that hardiness influences health in part via the coping strategies that people choose to apply in dealing with stressful situations.