If it does not kill you, does it make me stronger? The double-edged consequences of observing resilience in the...

The literature on resilience has focused predominantly on the consequences of resilience for the resilient individuals themselves. Yet, current theorizing on workplace events suggests that the critical and eye-catching nature of demonstrating resilience is likely to draw the attention of other employees. We explore these interpersonal dynamics surrounding resilience by developing and testing a model that delves into the consequences of employees observing their coworkers' resilience. Drawing from social comparison theory, we explain how observing resilience is related to both positive (inspiration) and negative (anxiety) social comparison emotions, based on perceptions of similarity with the resilient individual. We further theorize about the downstream consequences of these emotions for the observer's attitudes (positive mindset about stress) and behavior (adaptive performance). Across a combination of lab and field studies, we found that observing resilience is related to feelings of anxiety when the observer perceives themselves as being dissimilar to the resilient individual. However, the significant positive effect of observing resilience on inspiration was not conditional upon similarity perceptions. In turn, these feelings of inspiration and anxiety were associated with the observer having a more, or less, positive attitude toward stress, respectively, which was ultimately related to helping or hindering their adaptive performance in the workplace. We discuss how our research provides a rich avenue for future studies on the social dynamics surrounding employee resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).