Understanding Adaptive Responses to Adversity: Introduction to the Special Issue on Rethinking Resilience and Posttraumatic Growth.

Research on resilience and posttraumatic growth (PTG) has significantly advanced our understanding of human adaptability to adversity, reflecting a widespread belief in the United States that such adaptability is commonplace. However, recent studies have highlighted conceptual and methodological limitations in these fields. These limitations call into question the credibility of existing research and underscore the need for multidisciplinary perspectives in understanding adaptive responses to adversity. This special issue aims to provide a foundation for a new generation of resilience and PTG research. It brings together innovative theoretical and empirical work that focuses on several key areas: the multifaceted nature and impacts of adversity, the importance of clarifying resilience and PTG in marginalized communities, methodological advancements in the field, and challenges to core theoretical and methodological assumptions underlying our scientific practice. Public Significance Statement: This introduction provides an overview of key themes that emerged across the included articles in the special issue. We envision this special issue to be a foundation for the next generation of research on resilience and posttraumatic growth, one that is simultaneously more inclusive and more rigorous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]