Resilience Across the Life Span: A Tribute to Emmy E. Werner

Abstract

This issue on resilience across the life span honors the enormous contributions that Emmy E. Werner has made to developmental psychology. Her longitudinal work has challenged long-held assumptions concerning the inevitability of adverse adult outcomes for high-risk children. She focused instead on their resilience and interactions between the individual characteristics and the sociocultural context that enabled most to successfully overcome adversity. These articles address individual and contextual influences on resilience in high risk African-American adolescents, and how the long-term effects of combat experience on well-being in later life. The final article presents an overview of resilience at the individual and community levels.