130 chapter 5 an adaptive response, as denial of the adversity is typically considered maladaptive (Carver et al., 1989). However, the findings in this regard were not fully consistent (i.e., in some studies we found a positive relationship, in others no significant relationship, and in one study a small negative relationship), and we did not test this specifically in the context of COVID-19. As such, more research is needed to understand the relationship between transilience and perceived risks associated with an adversity. People Perceive Transilience in the Face of Large-Scale Contemporary Adversities Transilience is Perceived across Different Adversities and Countries Next, we wanted to examine whether people indeed perceive transilience in the face of contemporary adversities. We expected that, on average, people perceive they can persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform in the face of adversities, despite variations in specific risks and in the level of severity of the relevant threat. In general, we found that people perceive transilience in the face of different adversities and across socio-political contexts with different specific vulnerabilities and with varying levels of threat severity. In Chapter 2, we tested to what extent people perceive transilience in the face of climate change risks in the US, in the UK, and in a specific municipality in the Netherlands. As expected, we found that people on average perceive they can be transilient in the face of climate change risks, across contexts that face various types of risks (e.g., The Netherlands is particularly vulnerable to flooding, whereas different regions in the US face different climate-related risks depending on the specific location; Clayton et al., 2016; Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu, 2016). This suggests that people generally perceive they can do more than ‘bounce back’ to the status quo in the face of climate change, and that they acknowledge the possibility for positive change as well. In Chapter 3, we tested whether people also perceive transilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, an adversity that, compared to climate change, posed a much more acute, direct, and immediate threat for people’s lives. In line with our expectations, we found that people perceive transilience in the face of COVID-19 too, across different countries (i.e., both Italy and the Netherlands), and at different points in time; notably, these were contexts in which the severity of the threat posed by COVID-19 and in the governmental policies implemented to limit the spread of the virus differed (Capano et al., 2020). As such, our results suggest that people perceive they can do more than ‘bounce back’ even in the face of very acute and severely threatening adversities, like a sudden pandemic of a deadly virus. Notably, our longitudinal study revealed that the levels of transilience significantly increased over time in the Netherlands, where the second time point was characterised by higher severity and acuteness
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