Growth of Choice: What Kinds of Posttraumatic Growth Do Prospective Survivors of Trauma Prefer?

Posttraumatic growth (PTG), or the positive changes that occur after an individual goes through a trauma, is a field of study that has drawn much attention from positive psychologists, medical professionals, and other sources over its relatively brief time in the literature (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996; Coyne & Tennen, 2010). However, due to methodological problems associated with many of the studies conducted on PTG, there remain many questions about what constitutes genuine growth following a trauma, or if trauma is even necessary to stimulate growth (Jayawickreme & Blackie, 2014; Roepke, 2013). As such, understanding if there are preferences for growth following a traumatic event and potential personality factors that could predict these preferences could be a valuable addition to the literature. This study sought to understand what a sample of people, some of whom are potentially survivors of trauma, understand and prefer when it comes to positive changes that can happen after a traumatic event. The results indicate that, while there was no clear preference for change following a trauma, there were personality predictors for specific categories of growth. Future studies can investigate more specific group differences and potential use alternate measures of growth to broaden the field’s findings