Abstract:
Research indicates that over half the US population will experience a trauma at some point during their lifetime (Kessler et al., 1995). Following traumatic events, individuals frequently experience a range of intrusion, avoidance, and arousal symptoms that fall on a continuum and can occur with such frequency and intensity that they meet the criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD; American Psychiatric Association, 2001). However, though many people experience traumas, only a small percentage develop PTSD. Research shows that many trauma survivors actually report benefit finding, or posttraumatic growth, after trauma. Currently, there is no clear understanding of the relationship between PTSD symptoms and posttraumatic growth. The current study hypothesized that two very different types of cognitive processing - reflection and brooding - would moderate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and posttraumatic growth, with reflection strengthening the relationship (making it more positive), and
brooding weakening the relationship. 270 University undergraduate students completed self-report questionnaires asking about their trauma history, PTSD symptoms, their use of reflection and brooding, and their perceptions of posttraumatic growth. Although reflection and brooding both moderated the relationship between PTSD symptoms and posttraumatic growth, both had the same antagonistic effects, switching the relationship between PTSD symptoms and posttraumatic growth from positive to negative. The current study concludes that: 1) Future studies should investigate the role of third variables in attempting to understand the relationship between PTSD symptoms and posttraumatic growth; 2) Cognitive processing variables appear to be excellent sources of information in this relationship; 3) Brooding and reflection may represent one way to investigate distinctions between adaptive and maladaptive forms of cognitive processing after trauma, if measurement tools are improved.
