Today’s Goals

  • Mini-review: Resilience & nature relatedness
  • Consider a few more negative events and resilient responses Understand the concept of post traumatic growth
  • Unpack the Frazier et al. reading o Compare perceived growth to actual growth Discuss projects & final papers

 

Mini-Review:

  • What is ‘nature relatedness’?

How connected you feel with nature

  • Briefly describe the correlates of nature relatedness.

Correlates positively with nature relatedness Sustainability

  • What is resilience?

Recovery following a challenge

Assumes well-being or good things have decreases – improvement later

  • What are two factors that seem to buffer negative consequences of low SES in the MIDUS data? Mastery and control
  • Among older people, what factor seems to protect against cognitive decline? Finding meaning (benefit finding)
  • In the MIDUS data, what personal characteristic seems to help when a spouse dies?

 

Heart Attacks

Galatzer-Levy,I. R., & Bonanno, G. A. (2014). Optimism and death: Predicting the course and consequences of depression trajectories in response to heart attack. Psychological Science, 25, 2177-2188.

  • Health and Retirement Study
  • About 2000 participants, mean age = 71
  • Data 6 years before & 4 years after heart attack

Longitudinal study – information concerning individuals before and after their heart attack What kinds of people do well?

  • Assessed optimism o Leave inheritance, live to 85, etc.

Items that seem to ‘get at’ optimism

No specific measure design for this purpose

  • Assessed depression symptoms (CESD)

Way to understand who is doing well and who is not doing well

Interesting to see how individuals respond to a heart attack

  • Mortality – dependent measure

 

Statistical approach to find groups of people who are similar (similar set of correlations)

4 different groups of people (data driven)

  • Most people were resilient Only 11% became depressed
  • Developing depression post heart attack predicted mortality

Onset of depression post heart attack is what predicted mortality – does not mean causation

  • Otherwise depression not predictive
  • (Time 1) optimism predicted resilience

 

Prospective Earthquake Studies

  • Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow (1989); California o Assessed depression, stress, coping variables 14 days before and 10 days & 7 weeks after
    • More depressed & stressed before predicted after (10 days & 7 weeks)

Predicted more stress afterward o More severe experience predicted distress 10 days after o Rumination predicted additional distress

  • Milojev et al. (2014); New Zealand o High stability of big 5 traits over 2 years

Correlations between Time 1 and Time 2 were pretty high

Levels of stability very similar o Small decrease in emotional stability

Increase in neuroticism – living through an earthquake is not without its issues on individuals

 

Post Traumatic Growth

  • Trauma is obviously bad
  • Some people report benefits, growth
  • Sense of re-constructing self, meaning, relationships

Benefit finding

 

Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory

  • Relating to Others o ‘‘I have a greater sense of closeness with others’’
  • Personal Strength o ‘‘I have a greater feeling of self-reliance’’
  • New Possibilities o ‘‘I am able to do better things with my life’’
  • Appreciation of Life o ‘‘I can better appreciate each day’’
  • Spiritual Change o ‘‘I have a stronger religious faith”

When things get difficult, people tend to turn to religion or report religion being more important to them

  • (Rated with regard to change since trauma)

Prominent ways this experience is assessed

Attempts to capture common feelings of change

Retrospective assessment

 

Frazier et al. (2009) Study

  • PTG or ‘benefit finding’ has become big, especially with surge in positive psychology
  • Perceived growth has positive correlates
  • BUT, do perceptions match actual change?
    • Consider research on personality, relationships o Priming trauma increases reports of meaning

Are measures of PTG valid measures of (actual) growth?

They appear to be valid measures of peoples perceptions of growth Are people right about how they think they’ve changed? • A retrospective measure of PTG requires participants to:

What do you have to do to answer these questions?

  1. evaluate their current standing on a dimension (e.g., closeness to other people),
  2. recall their previous standing on the same dimension,
  3. compare their current and previous standings,
  4. assess the degree of change, and
  5. determine how much of that change can be attributed to the traumatic event.
  • Prospective, longitudinal method:
    • Recruit lots of people (>1,500) o Assess levels of well-being, etc.
    • Wait 2 months
    • ‘Hope’ some experienced traumatic events o Assess perceived change (PTGI)
    • Assess well-being, etc. again (actual change) o Assess distress, coping
  • Trauma sample of 122 participants (~10%)

Evaluation of trauma measured through specific (defined) incidences that were asked in a self-report to the participant

  • Reported ‘considerable or extreme distress’ o a loved one experiencing a life-threatening accident, assault, or illness (28%);
    • sudden and unexpected death of a close friend or loved one (27%);
    • any other event that was life threatening, caused serious injury, or was highly distressing (11%); o unwanted sexual attention (8%); o a serious motor-vehicle accident (6%)
  • 71% of events rated as causing ‘intense fear, helplessness, or horror’ –cf. DSM criteria
  • PTGI items assessed as ‘current state at time 1 and time 2 (experience of last 2 weeks)

Within the past 2 weeks – reading these on scales of agreement

How do these describe your past 2 weeks o ‘‘I have had a sense of closeness with others’’ o ‘‘I have had a feeling of self-reliance’’ o ‘‘I have been able to do good things with my life’’ o ‘‘I have appreciated each day’’ o ‘‘I have had a strong religious faith’’

  • Additional, related scales at time 1 & 2 o Ryff positive relations with others
    • Presence of meaning o Satisfaction with life scale o Gratitude scale
    • Religious commitment inventory
  • Distress (depression, anxiety) at time 1 & 2
  • Positive reinterpretation coping at time 2 o I look for something good in what is happening’
  • Perceived post traumatic change not strongly related to actual changes

They way people thought they changed was not related to way they actually changed

  • Perceived growth correlated with more distress

Individuals who believe they have changed (perceived growth) associated with more distress – positive correlation Not typically what is found in studies – in this instance

Change in distress from beginning to end

  • Actual growth correlated with less distress

Individuals who have changed (actual growth) associated with less distress There was some actual ‘growth’

Significant proportion of people reported higher life satisfaction at Time 2 vs. 1

Most people seemed to have positive experiences during these changes

  • Religious commitment somewhat different

If you are appreciating life more – association with less distress

Hard to estimate

  • Limitations of study o Sample

Mostly female undergraduates

Not representative of individuals who usually experience higher levels of trauma o Kinds of trauma (?)

Something bad happening to someone they loved

Maybe it’s not equivalent to something happening directly to the individuals o Short time frame

Measured at most, 2 months post trauma

Sometimes, important findings happen much later on

  • Implications of this?
  • Why is religious commitment change ‘accurate’?

More actual events that you can measure – actions of doing/pursuing

  • Might some actual positive change be due trauma?

Notion that some changed in positive ways

Was this due to the trauma itself, or other variables?

  • Is perceived or actual change more important?
  • Must people seek meaning?

 

Well-Being Project: Final Papers

  • Format of final paper considerably different than proposals.
  • Read the full project/paper guidelines a few times (on cuLearn).
  • Final paper rubric on cuLearn soon o this will guide marking and provides a checklist for essential components; guidelines have more

 

Paper Requirements

  • Must have good narrative flow o Include an introduction & conclusion
  • Describe project, assessment, & experience
  • Integrate psychology literature with your project o This is a ‘research paper’ & ‘experience paper’
  • Must address broader implications, applications
  • At least 5 academic sources; 6-8 pages long
  • APA style (format, referencing, etc.)
  • File names and title page have your name

 

Some Tips

  • Avoid direct quotes; almost always better to paraphrase; still reference the source.
  • Fine to use “I”. You probably need to for a personal project.
  • Do not assume your reader knows positive psychology like Dr. Zelenski; ‘connect the dots’
  • Assigned readings helpful (but not toward 5)
  • Do not cut and paste article descriptions from proposal!
  • Do not use contractions (APA style)

 

How to reference clearly

  • (and honestly)
  • Think: what are you taking from your source?

Default assumption is usually an empirical report

  • “Research suggests that muffins can cause aggression (Dunken, Doh, & Knut, 2008).”

Use your words to clarify o “In their review of the breakfast literature, Dunken et al. (2008) concluded that muffins…” o Unless a major review paper, better to the have primary, empirical source. (Track it down.)