question: Background/Objective: The objective of the study was to elucidate the underlying mechanism through which basic personality dimensions predict indicators of psychological functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic, including subjective well-being and perceived stress As a personality characteristic highly contextualized in stressful circumstances, resilience was expected to have a mediating role in this relationship Method: A sample of 2,722 Slovene adults, aged from 18 to 82 years filled in the Big Five Inventory, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Mental Health Continuum A path analysis with the Bootstrap estimation procedure was performed to evaluate the mediating effect of resilience in the relationship between personality and psychological functioning Results: Resilience fully or partially mediated the relationships between all the Big Five but extraversion with subjective well-being and stress experienced at the beginning of the COVID-19 outburst Neuroticism was the strongest predictor of less adaptive psychological functioning both directly and through diminished resilience Conclusions: Resilience may be a major protective factor required for an adaptive response of an individual in stressful situations such as pandemic and the associated lockdown (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)