Association Rule Learning Is an Easy and Efficient Method for Identifying Profiles of Traumas and Stressors that Predict Psychopathology in Disaster Survivors: The Example of Sri Lanka.

Research indicates that psychopathology in disaster survivors is a function of both experienced trauma and stressful life events. However, such studies are of limited utility to practitioners who are about to go into a new post-disaster setting as (1) most of them do not indicate which specific traumas and stressors are especially likely to lead to psychopathology; and (2) each disaster is characterized by its own unique traumas and stressors, which means that practitioners have to first collect their own data on common traumas, stressors and symptoms of psychopathology prior to planning any interventions. An easy-to-use and easy-to-interpret data analytical method that allows one to identify profiles of trauma and stressors that predict psychopathology would be of great utility to practitioners working in post-disaster contexts. We propose that association rule learning (ARL), a big data mining technique, is such a method. We demonstrate the technique by applying it to data from 337 survivors of the Sri Lankan civil war who completed the Penn/RESIST/Peradeniya War Problems Questionnaire (PRPWPQ), a comprehensive, culturally-valid measure of experienced trauma, stressful life events, anxiety and depression. ARL analysis revealed five profiles of traumas and stressors that predicted the presence of some anxiety, three profiles that predicted the presence of severe anxiety, four profiles that predicted the presence of some depression and five profiles that predicted the presence of severe depression. ARL allows one to identify context-specific associations between specific traumas, stressors and psychological distress, and can be of great utility to practitioners who wish to efficiently analyze data that they have collected, understand the output of that analysis, and use it to provide psychosocial aid to those who most need it in post-disaster settings

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 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 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

Are sequential sample designs useful for examining post-traumatic changes in character strengths?

Previous research on differences in character strengths as a result of traumatic cultural events has relied on non-overlapping samples of individuals who completed online questionnaires before and after the event. This study expands on these previous studies by examining differences in self-reports of character strengths before, between, and after two terror attacks on Paris, France, in 2015, and further comparing these differences to contemporaneous differences in two other countries. Completers of the inventory during the same periods from the United States (N = 528,912) and Australia (N = 174,591) served as the comparison groups. After controlling for age and gender, six strengths in the French sample, nine strengths in the Australian sample and seven in the US sample remained significant. A clear discernable pattern did not emerge. Effect sizes were consistently miniscule, which when combined with very large samples may account for finding significance even though within-nation differences are unreliable

Situation-based contingencies underlying wisdom-content manifestations: examining intellectual humility in daily life

Objectives: Existing assessments of intellectual humility (IH)—a key component of wisdom—do not examine its manifestation in daily life while sufficiently focusing on the core idea of the construct: owning up to one’s intellectual shortcomings. The present research sought to examine situational contingencies underlying daily manifestations of IH-relevant characteristics. The State-Trait IH scale developed here is novel in that it both offers greater content validity and coverage of IH and provides a robust measure for assessing IH in a contextualized manner in daily life. Methods: We developed a trait version of the State-Trait IH Scale in two studies and subsequently examined daily manifestations of IH-relevant characteristics utilizing a contextualized state version of the State-Trait IH Scale in a 21-day experience sampling study. Here we tested how specific situational contingencies (associated with the context and the personality of the individual with whom participants engaged) influenced the manifestation of IH-relevant qualities. Results: We found strong evidence for the validity of both versions of the scale. Specifically, the state measure exhibited high within-person variability, and aggregated state assessments were strongly correlated with the trait measure. Additionally, morality positively predicted manifestation of IH, while disagreeableness negatively predicted manifestation of IH. Discussion: These results offer new directions for research on the expression of wisdom-related characteristics in daily life

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

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

The elusive theory of everything

We applaud Baumert and colleagues’ ambitious idea to integrate personality processes, structure, and development into a single general theory with the aim of fully explaining people’s behavior across situations. However, we argue that building a general theory of human behavior, similarly to a Theory of Everything, may not only be less feasible, but also less meaningful, than it appears at first sight