MEMORABLE MESSAGES AS ANTICIPATORY RESILIENCE DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF COLLEGE
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This dissertation examines relationships between anticipatory resilience, communication resilience processes, and academic success outcomes among students in their early years of matriculation. Though resilience has over 60 years of research foregrounding in developmental psychology (O’Dougherty Wright et al., 2013), in the field of communication, conceptualizations and research to understand resilience are relatively recent developments. In 2010, Buzzanell theorized the role of communication in the development of resilience with the communication theory of resilience (CTR). CTR is comprised of five interrelated processes: affirming identity anchors, maintaining and using communication networks, constructing alternative logics, foregrounding productive action while backgrounding negative feelings, and crafting normalcy (Buzzanell, 2019; Wilson et al., 2021). While CTR proposes that CTR processes are enacted as resilience or to create resilient outcomes in response to trigger events, CTR also acknowledges that people may bring pre-existing experiences or understandings to adverse situations that may help them to be “better positioned than others to enact resilience” (Wilson et al., 2021, p. 481). CTR labels this idea anticipatory resilience and asserts that past experiences as well as exposure to the experiences of others through shared stories and memories can help bolster a person’s ability to face new challenges prior to experiencing them (Buzzanell, 2019). An example CTR provides is memorable messages shared from “family members and/or media celebrities about getting through hard times” as a source of anticipatory resilience (Wilson et al., 2021, p. 507). Memorable messages, interpersonal messages of value (Knapp et al., 1981) that stick with a person and remain easily accessible (Koenig Kellas, 2010), can provide people with valuable information such as an understanding of how to navigate a difficult time (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012). This dissertation in research aims to further the limited research related to anticipatory resilience as a construct. Finally, CTR also proposes that CTR processes mediate the relationship between anticipatory resilience and resilient outcomes, with Wilson et al. (2021) acknowledging this assumption as an area of future research and clarification. This dissertation tests this proposed relationship to provide answers to fill this gap in the communication literature where resilience is concerned. By testing the relationships between anticipatory resilience, CTR processes, and adaptive outcomes in the face of stressful or transitional experiences, this dissertation supports the process-based conceptualization of resilience and the mediating role of communication resilience processes on students’ anticipatory resilience and institutional and goal commitment.