Posttraumatic Growth and Resilience: Their Distinctive Relationships with Optimism and Pessimism.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Posttraumatic growth (PTG) and resilience are distinct psychological constructs.
• Their relationships with optimism are well-documented, but associations with pessimism are less understood.
• This lack of clarity obscures conceptual differences between PTG and resilience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the distinct associations of optimism and pessimism with PTG and resilience.
• To examine whether these associations differ when optimism/pessimism are conceptualized as dispositional traits versus cognitive expectancies.
• To clarify the nuanced relationships between optimistic/pessimistic characteristics and psychological adaptation.

Main Methods:

• A survey study with 347 university students in the Midwestern United States.
• Measures assessed optimism and pessimism as personality traits.
• A cognitive task evaluated future event expectancies and belief updating regarding personal and other-related positive/negative events.

Main Results:

• Dispositional optimism positively correlated with both PTG and resilience.
• Dispositional pessimism negatively correlated only with resilience.
• Higher positive event expectancy was linked to PTG; lower negative event expectancy was linked to resilience.
• Perceiving positive events as more likely for oneself than others was associated with resilience.

Conclusions:

• PTG and resilience exhibit asymmetrical relationships with optimism and pessimism.
• Distinctions emerge based on whether these are considered personality traits or cognitive expectancies.
• Findings contribute to a clearer differentiation between PTG and resilience in psychological adaptation research.