The Positive, Sustaining, and Protective Power of Resources: Insights from Conservation of Resources Theory

Hobfoll’s conservation of resources (COR) theory was developed independently of Foa’s SRT and is a motivational theory of stress focusing on the prediction of stress and resilience. In this chapter, Lisa Stines Doane, Jeremiah Schumm, and Stevan Hobfoll discuss ways in which the psychological economy of resources sustains and protects people and how their work is related to and extends SRT. The authors present three principles and three corollaries of COR that are related to resource gains and losses. Hobfoll’s notion of “caravan passageways” highlight the predicament that people’s ability to build and maintain their resource reservoirs is largely dependent on factors outside their control. Those who possess few resources are, according to COR, not only more vulnerable to losses and less capable of gains, but are also likely to get caught in a loss spiral where initial loss yields further loss. The opposite spiral further benefits those who are well-off. Doane, Schumm, and Hobfoll conclude their chapter by discussions of the “positive” variables hope, optimism, resilience, and posttraumatic growth, asking how people who lack resources and face trauma can still be creative and hopeful.