Trauma exposure and short-term volitional personality trait change

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Trauma Studies
• Personality Science

Background:

• Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is characterized by positive changes in identity, relationships, and worldviews following trauma.
• PTG is increasingly conceptualized as positive personality change.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test an operationalization of PTG as positive personality change.
• To examine the influence of intrapersonal (motivation to change traits) and social factors (perceived social support, event centrality) on trait change after trauma.

Main Methods:

• A pre-registered, 16-week longitudinal study with 1004 participants reporting on recent trauma exposure, event centrality, and social support.
• A subset of 146 participants with trauma exposure and a matched control group reported on personality traits across 8 waves and motivation to change traits across 3 waves.

Main Results:

• Trait change was observed but not consistently indicative of PTG.
• Agreeableness declined in the trauma group compared to controls, particularly when participants did not desire change.
• Conscientiousness declined for individuals with highly central traumas; social support predicted trait increases only in the control group.

Conclusions:

• Defining PTG solely as positive trait change may be insufficient.
• Future research should explore facet-level trait changes and employ ideographic methods to better understand individual differences in post-traumatic adaptation.