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

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

Investigating the veracity of self-reported post-traumatic growth: a profile analysis approach

Research into posttraumatic growth—positive psychological change that people report in their relationships, priorities in life, and self-perception after experiences of adversity—has been severely critiqued. We investigated the degree to which community members’ friends and relatives corroborated targets’ self-perceived positive and negative changes as measured by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-42. We found corroboration only for negative changes when we examined overall (averaged) scores. However, using a profile analysis procedure, we found significant participant–informant agreement on the domains of change that had relatively higher scores in the target’s profile and those that had relatively lower scores. Our results demonstrate that informants were able to observe that targets had changed and were sensitive to the idiosyncratic ways in which these changes had manifested in targets’ behavior

Interdependent Transformations: Integrating Insights from Relationship Science to Advance Post-Traumatic Growth and Personality Change Research

People have a tremendous ability to grow and change for the better following adverse life events. This capacity for growth has captured the attention of psychologists interested in understanding the mechanisms underpinning both personality and well-being. This paper advocates for a greater integration of relationship science into this area of study as a means of advancing post-traumatic growth and personality change research. Relationships, both as an impetus for change and as evidence of growth, have featured consistently in the post-traumatic growth and adversity literatures. Drawing from interdependence theory in particular, this paper highlights how the unique structure of close relationships and relationship dynamics can be applied to address outstanding theoretical questions related to the advancement of post-traumatic growth research, as well as offers a critique of the practice of using relationship outcomes (e.g., connection) as evidence of post-traumatic growth. Finally,this paper encourages psychologists across subdisciplines to share their unique skills and insights to help generate more robust psychological theories and methods

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

Synthesis of triazole-linked 2-trichloromethylquinazolines and exploration of their efficacy against P. falciparum

Using 2-trichloromethylquinazoline as scaffold, seven novel triazole-linked compounds have been synthesized using CuAAC chemistry. The in vitrobiological activity of four of the compounds on the Plasmodium falciparumchloroquine-sensitive strain NF54 was then determined. The compounds which were tested showed moderate activity with 1.45 /iM as the lowest inhibitory concentration

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