Personality science, resilience, and posttraumatic growth

PASTOR represents an innovative development in the study of resilience. This commentary highlights how PASTOR can help both clarify critical questions in and benefit from engaging with new research in personality science on behavioral flexibility across situations in addition to stability over time, and also clarify the relationship between resilience and posttraumatic growth

Examining the Longitudinal Associations Between Repeated Narration of Recent Transgressions Within Individuals’ Romantic Relationships and Character Growth in Empathy, Humility, and Compassion

This prospective longitudinal study examined whether repeated written narration of relational transgressions was associated with increases in empathy, humility, and compassion over 1 year. Although engagement in reflective and meaning-making processing styles has been theorized to facilitate adversarial growth existing research has been limited by methodological issues and has yet to examine whether this mechanism is associated with character trait changes over time. Participants provided ratings of trait empathy, humility, and compassion in 5 waves at 3-month intervals. In Wave 2, participants provided a written narrative describing a recent relational transgression against their romantic partner. Participants then engaged in repeated narration of recent romantic transgressions in Waves 3 through 5. The narratives were coded for redemption, positive self-event connections, and degree of personal responsibility taken. Linear growth curve models were used to examine the extent to which these narrative themes were associated with character growth. Overall, there was little consistent and robust evidence across models that narration was associated with changes in empathy, humility, and compassion. The implications for research into adversarial growth are discussed in reference to the appropriateness of operationalizing adversarial growth as character growth and the extent to which relational transgressions can facilitate adversarial growth

A qualitative investigation into the cultural master narrative for overcoming trauma and adversity in the United Kingdom.

esearch in the field of narrative psychology has found that redemption—a narrative sequence in which people recount emotionally negative experiences as having positive endings—is a useful mechanism for coping with adversity. Redemption has been viewed as a cultural master narrative in North America, providing individuals with a socially valued script for narrating challenging life experiences. Presently little research has examined the presence and function of the redemption narrative outside of North American contexts. The aim of this qualitative study, therefore, was to identify themes in U.K. individuals’ narratives of trauma and adversity to gain insight into the content of the master narrative for meaning-making in the U.K. Sixty-five participants (57 females, Mage = 21.97, SD = 7.24) with little to no experience of lifetime adversity were recruited into an online survey. Participants answered open-ended questions adopting the perspective of a survivor from a selected U.K. national tragedy, focusing on how they felt survivors could recover from trauma. We identified 2 themes in our thematic analysis that were relevant to recovery: recuperation and redemption. Recuperation was most commonly reported, it was described as a gradual lessening of symptoms over time and the ability to cope with the lasting emotional and physical scars. Our findings suggest that redemption is not necessarily the dominant cultural script in the U.K. for guiding recovery in the aftermath of trauma. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved

Examining the protective influence of posttraumatic growth on interpersonal suicide risk factors in a 6-week longitudinal study

Research has found an inverse relationship between posttraumatic growth (PTG) and suicidal ideation in military and community samples that holds when controlling for other suicide risk factors. However, further research is needed into the underlying mechanisms to clarify how PTG protects against the formation of suicidal ideation. The current two-wave longitudinal study examined whether perceiving PTG from recent adverse circumstances while in a national lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic attenuated the positive relationship of two interpersonal suicide risk factors – perceived burdensomeness (PB) and thwarted belonginess (TB)–over 6 weeks. Participants (n = 170) were recruited online from Prolific from income-deprived areas in the United Kingdom (mean age = 37.65; SD = 12.50; 53.5% female). Post-hoc power analyses indicated we had insufficient power to examine the hypothesised mediation for TB. We examined whether PTG mediated the relationship between PB at wave 1 and wave 2 while controlling for depression and anxiety in a sample of individuals at-risk for suicidal ideation. PTG did significantly and partially mediate the positive relationship between PB at wave 1 and 2. We discuss the theoretical and clinical implications that could result if future research successfully replicates these initial exploratory findings

Examining the impact of major life events on the frequency and experience of daily social events

Objective: Life events can impact people's dispositional functioning by changing their state‐level patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. One pathway through which this change may be facilitated is changes in the experience of daily social events. Method: We examined the dynamic relationship between major life events and the subsequent experience of positive and negative daily social events in a year‐long longitudinal study (initial N = 1247). Results: Experiencing positive and negative major life events moderated the effects of positive and negative social events on event‐contingent state well‐being and ill‐being in ways that were mostly (but not always) consistent with both endowment and contrast effects on judgments of well‐being. Furthermore, negative life events predicted an increase in the subsequent trajectory of negative social events, while the experience of daily ill‐being predicted the subsequent experience of negative social events. Conclusions: These findings highlight the possible impact of major life events by explaining how they shape the subsequent experience of daily social events

Examining the functional utility of personal growth initiative in a war-affected Sri Lankan Tamil sample

The present study explored personal growth initiative (PGI;Robitschek, 1998)—the extent a person is motivated to and actively sets goals towards achieving self-improvement—and its relationship to functional impairment and life satisfaction among a war-affected Sri Lankan sample. 200 war-affected Tamil individuals in Sri Lanka completed measures of PGI, wartime experiences, functional impairment, and life satisfaction. Two hierarchical regressions were conducted examining current life satisfaction and degree of functional impairment. After controlling for depression and wartime experiences, PGI was positively associated with life satisfaction. However, no association was observed between PGI and reduced functional impairment. In contrast to other contexts of ethnopolitical violence, PGI was associated with subjective well-being, but not improved functioning. These results have implications for potential utilityof PGI across different contexts of ethnopolitical warfare

Distinguishing post-traumatic growth from psychological adjustment among Rwandan genocide survivors

Research into post-traumatic growth describes the potentially transformative and positive impact that highly challenging and traumatic life experiences can have on an individual’s identity, relationships and worldviews. The positive changes individuals identify in the aftermath of challenging circumstances are theorised to be more than fleeting positive illusions, and instead represent enduring character development. However, a central debate in this literature is whether post-traumatic growth is really more than psychological adjustment to a difficult post-trauma reality. In this chapter, we draw upon testimonial data from a sample of survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to differentiate these two processes. This population provides a relevant context with which to evaluate this question, as the severity of the genocide made adjustment to post-genocide life a tragic necessity.PostprintPeer reviewe

Examining Associations Between Major Negative Life Events, Changes in Weekly Reports of Post-Traumatic Growth and Global Reports of Eudaimonic Well-Being

Research on post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been compromised by methodological limitations. Recent process-oriented accounts of personality suggest, however, that positive changes may occur through short-term (i.e., state-level) changes in PTG. In the current year-long study, 1,247 participants provided weekly reports of significant negative events as well as state manifestations of PTG (up to 44 assessments per individual; 34,205 total). Trait assessments of eudaimonic well-being (EWB) were administered at intake and Weeks 45 and 52. Experiencing negative life events predicted increases in state PTG, which in turn predicted increases in EWB. However, stability was observed when modeling prospective changes in overall state PTG before and after the initial negative life event or across all negative life events occurring during the study time frame. These findings highlight the importance of studying PTG-related processes using appropriate research designs, analytic strategies, and time frames

Broadening our Understanding of Adversarial Growth: The Contribution of Narrative Methods

After adversity, individuals sometimes report adversarial growth - positive changes in their identity, relationships, and worldviews. We examined how narrative methods enhanced understanding of adversarial growth compared to standard questionnaires. Participants (N = 411) from college and community samples reported on their well-being, wrote a narrative about a highly challenging experience, and answered questionnaires on adversarial growth. Results showed that adversarial growth coded in narratives was positively associated with widely used self-report questionnaires of adversarial growth. Unexpectedly, narrative growth did not predict incremental validity in well-being outcomes compared to standard questionnaires. We found unique expressions of adversarial growth in a qualitative analysis of the narratives. We discuss the added value of using narratives for the assessment of adversarial growth

Investigating corroboration of self-perceived posttraumatic growth among Sri Lankan Tamil survivors of ethnopolitical warfare through trait, domain, and profile agreement approaches.

Though research on assessing posttraumatic growth has been severely critiqued, some evidence suggests close others can observe and report changes in individuals following traumatic life events and are sensitive to idiosyncratic ways in which changes manifest. We extended these findings by investigating corroboration of self-perceived posttraumatic growth (PTG) and depreciation (PTD) as measured by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory–42 (PTGI-42) among Sri Lankan Tamil war survivors (n = 200). Informants slightly corroborated overall levels of PTG and PTD, while a more nuanced profile analysis procedure revealed overall—but not distinctive—profile agreement. This suggests self–other agreement is modest and may partly reflect shared narratives and collective cultural understandings about how people change after trauma. Results demonstrate further that informants were not sensitive to idiosyncratic ways in which target individuals had changed. Together, the lack of validity evidence suggests that the PTGI-42 may be inadequate in some cross-cultural contexts as a measure of nuanced posttraumatic change (i.e., as a measure of specific changes in the five theorized domains of growth and depreciation). Future work should emphasize culture- and context-sensitive measurement of posttraumatic change, particularly focusing on methods other than retrospective self-reports, such as prospective longitudinal designs