Finding Positive Meaning in a Stressful Event and Coping

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Abstract
People whose homes were damaged or destroyed by a fire were surveyed immediately after the fire and 1 year later. It was predicted that finding positive meaning in that traumatic event would be associated with better coping and with less blame to others for the event. Five ways of focusing on the positive were measured in this study: finding side benefits, making social comparisons, imagining worse situations, forgetting the negative, and redefining. As expected, positive revaluators coped better and were somewhat less likely to blame others. Two alternative explanations for these relationships—amount of loss incurred and social desirability—were considered, but analyses did not lend support to these interpretations. The longitudinal analysis indicated that one's initial cognitive orientation toward an event such as a fire appears to be fairly stable: There were few changes in positive meaning or blame during the year following the fire.

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