The many facets of meaning making: Comparing multiple measures of meaning making and their relations to psychological distress

Memory

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 111-124

  Waters, Theodore E A ^a   Shallcross, John F ^a   Fivush, Robyn ^a  

^a EMORY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Coherence; Contamination; Meaning making; Narrative; Post traumatic growth; Trauma

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; COGNITION; COMPARATIVE STUDY; DEPRESSION; FEMALE; HUMAN; MALE; MENTAL STRESS; POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGICAL RATING SCALE; QUESTIONNAIRE; VERBAL COMMUNICATION;

ADULT; COGNITION; DEPRESSION; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; NARRATION; PSYCHIATRIC STATUS RATING SCALES; QUESTIONNAIRES; STRESS DISORDERS, POST-TRAUMATIC; STRESS, PSYCHOLOGICAL;

EID: 84873676554     PISSN: 09658211     EISSN: 14640686     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2012.705300     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Adler, J. M., Kissel, E. C. and McAdams, D. P. 2006. Emerging from the CAVE: Attributional style and the narrative study of identity in midlife adults. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 30: 39-51. doi:10.1007/s10608-006-9005-1
2. Baerger, D. R. and McAdams, D. P. 1999. Life story coherence and its relation to psychological well-being. Narrative Inquiry, 9: 69-96. doi:10.1075/ni.9.1.05bae
3. Bauer, J. J., McAdams, D. P. and Sakaeda, A. R. 2005. Interpreting the good life: Growth memories in the lives of mature, happy people. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88: 203-217. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.1.203
4. Beck, A. T., Steer, R. A. and Brown, G. K. 1996. BDI-II manual, 2nd ed, San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
5. Bernat, J. A., Ronfeldt, H. M., Calhoun, K. S. and Arias, I. 1998. Prevalence of traumatic events and peritraumatic predictors of posttraumatic stress symptoms in a nonclinical sample of college students. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 11: 645-664. doi:10.1023/A:1024485130934
6. Boals, A., Banks, J. B., Hathaway, L. M. and Schuettler, D. 2011. Use of cognitive words in stressful narratives reflects the meaning making process. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 30: 378-403. doi:10.1521/jscp.2011.30.4.378
7. Boals, A. and Klein, K. 2005. Word use in emotional narratives about failed romantic relationships and subsequent mental health. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 24: 252-268. doi:10.1177/0261927X05278386
8. Boals, A., Steward, J. M. and Schuettler, D. 2010. Advancing our understanding of posttraumatic growth by considering event centrality. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 15: 518-533. doi:10.1080/15325024.2010.519271
9. Bohanek, J. G. and Fivush, R. 2010. Personal narratives, well-being, and gender in adolescence. Cognitive Development, 25: 368-379. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2010.08.003
10. Bohanek, J. G., Fivush, R. and Walker, E. 2005. Memories of positive and negative events. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19: 51-66. doi:10.1002/acp.1064
11. Brown, N. R., Lee, P. J., Krslak, M., Conrad, F. G., Hansen, T. G. B., Havelka, J. and Reddon, J. R. 2009. Living in history: How war, terrorism, and natural disasters affect the organization of autobiographical memory. Psychological Science, 20: 399-405. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02307.x
12. Bruner, J. S. 1990. Acts of meaning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13. Creamer, M., Bell, R. and Failla, S. 2003. Psychometric properties of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41: 1489-1496. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2003.07.010
14. Dunmore, E., Clark, D. M. and Ehlers, A. E. 1999. Cognitive factors involved in the onset and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after physical or sexual assault. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 37: 809-829. doi:10.1016/S0005-7967(98)00181-8
15. Fivush, R. 2008. Remembering and reminiscing: How individual lives are constructed in family narratives. Memory Studies, 1: 45-54. doi:10.1177/1750698007083888
16. Fivush, R. and Baker-Ward, L. 2005. The search for meaning: Developmental perspectives on internal state language in autobiographical memory. Journal of Cognition and Development, 6: 455-462. doi:10.1207/s15327647jcd0604_1
17. Fivush, R., Bohanek, J. G., Zaman, W., & Grapin, S. 2012. Gender differences in adolescents' autobiographical narratives. Journal of Cognition and Development, 13, 295-319.
18. Fivush, R., Marin, K. A., Crawford, M., Brewin, C. R. and Reynolds, M. 2007. Children's narratives and well-being. Cognition and Emotion, 21: 1414-1434. doi:10.1080/02699930601109531
19. Fivush, R., Sales, J. M. and Bohanek, J. G. 2008. Meaning making in mothers' and children's narratives of emotional events. Memory, 16: 579-594. doi:10.1080/09658210802150681
20. Frattaroli, J. 2006. Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132: 823-865. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823
21. Grubaugh, A. L. and Resick, P. A. 2007. Posttraumatic growth in treatment-seeking female assault victims. Psychiatry Quarterly, 78: 145-155. doi:10.1007/s11126-006-9034-7
22. Habermas, T. and Paha, C. 2001. The development of coherence in adolescent's life narratives. Narrative Inquiry, 11: 35-54. doi:10.1075/ni.11.1.02hab
23. Hall, B. J., Hobfoll, S. E., Palmieri, P. A., Canetti-Nisim, D., Shapira, O., Johnson, R. J. and Galea, S. 2008. The psychological impact of impending forced settler disengagement in Gaza: Trauma and posttraumatic growth. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 21: 22-29. doi:10.1002/jts.20301
24. Helgeson, V. S., Reynolds, K. A. and Tomich, P. L. 2006. A meta-analytic review of benefit finding and growth. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74: 797-816. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.74.5.797
25. Levine, S. Z., Laufer, A., Hamama-Raz, Y., Stien, E. and Solomon, Z. 2008. Posttraumatic growth in adolescence: Examining its components and relationship with PTSD. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 21: 492-496. doi:10.1002/jts.20361
26. Linley, P. A. and Joseph, J. 2004. Positive change following trauma and adversity: A review. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17: 11-21. doi:10.1023/B:JOTS.0000014671.27856.7e
27. Lodi-Smith, J., Geise, A. C., Roberts, B. W. and Robins, R. W. 2009. Narrating personality change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96: 679-689. doi:10.1037/a0014611
28. Marin, K. A., Bohanek, J. G. and Fivush, R. 2008. Positive effects of talking about the negative: Family narratives of negative experiences and preadolescents' perceived competence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18: 573-593. doi:10.1111/j.1532-7795.2008.00572.x
29. McAdams, D. P. 1995. What do we know when we know a person?. Journal of Personality, 63: 365-396. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1995.tb00500.x
30. McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E. and Mansfield, E. 1997. Stories of commitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72: 678-694. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.3.678
31. McAdams, D. P., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M., Patten, A. and Bowman, P. T. 2001. When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative, and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27: 472-483. doi:10.1177/0146167201274008
32. Morris, B. A., Shakespeare-Finch, J., Rieck, M. and Newbery, J. 2005. Multidimensional nature of posttraumatic growth in an Australian population. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18: 575-585. doi:10.1002/jts.20067
33. Murphy, A., Fivush, R., Sales, R., & Teague, G. 2009. Children's narratives of scary asthma events in relation to emotional well-being. Poster presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Society for Pediatric Psychology, Kansas City, April.
34. Pals, J. L. and McAdams, D. P. 2004. The transformed self: A narrative understanding of posttraumatic growth. Psychological Inquiry, 15: 65-69.
35. Park, C. L. 2010. Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136: 257-301. doi:10.1037/a0018301
36. Pennebaker, J. W. 1997. Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions, New York, NY: Guilford Press.
37. Pennebaker, J. W. and Chung, C. K. 2007. "Expressive writing, emotional upheavals, and health". In Foundations of health psychology, Edited by: Friedman, H. S. and Silver, R. C. 263-284. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
38. Pennebaker, J. W. and Chung, C. K. 2011. "Expressive writing and its links to mental and physical health". In Oxford handbook of health psychology, Edited by: Friedman, H. 417-437. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
39. Pennebaker, J. W. and Francis, M. E. 1999. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC): A computerized text analysis program, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
40. Pennebaker, J. W., Zech, E. and Rimé, B. 2001. "Disclosing and sharing emotion: Psychological, social, and health consequences". In Handbook of bereavement research: Consequences, coping, and care, Edited by: Stroebe, M. S., Hansson, R. O., Stroebe, W. and Schut, H. 517-544. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
41. Reese, E., Haden, C. H., Baker-Ward, L., Bauer, P. J., Fivush, R. and Ornstein, P. A. 2011. Coherence in personal narratives: A multidimensional model. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12: 1-38. doi:10.1080/15248372.2011.587854
42. Ricoeur, P. 1991. "Life in quest of narrative". In On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and interpretation, Edited by: Wood, D. 20-33. London, UK: Routledge.
43. Sales, J. M., Merrill, N. A., & Fivush, R. 2012. Does meaning make it better: Narrative meaning making in at-risk African-American adolescent females. Memory. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/09658211.2012.706614
44. Schuettler, D. and Boals, A. 2011. The path to posttraumatic growth versus posttraumatic stress disorder: Contributions of event centrality and coping. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 16: 180-194. doi:10.1080/15325024.2010.519273
45. Shum, M. S. 1998. The role of temporal landmarks in autobiographical memory processes. Psychological Bulletin, 124: 423-442. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.423
46. Tedeschi, R. G. and Calhoun, L. G. 1996. The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9: 455-471. doi:10.1002/jts.2490090305
47. Tedeschi, R. G. and Calhoun, L. G. 2004. Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15: 1-18. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01
48. Valentiner, D. P., Foa, E. B., Riggs, D. S. and Gershuny, B. S. 1996. Coping strategies and posttraumatic stress disorder in female victims of sexual and nonsexual assault. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105: 455-458. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.105.3.455
49. Weiss, D. S. and Marmar, C. R. 1997. "The Impact of Event Scale-Revised". In Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD, Edited by: Wilson, J. P. and Keane, T. M. 399-411. New York, NY: Guilford Press.