The Need for Meaning Following Disaster
- 1 September 1986
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 12 (3) , 300-310
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167286123006
Abstract
Child victims of a lightning strike were interviewed to assess their attributions for the incident and to judge the degree of their emotional upset and symptomatology following the tragedy. Those who made any attribution were significantly more upset than those who made no attribution for the incident. Anecdotal data suggest that self-blaming attributions were made by those adults who, by virtue of their roles, had an opportunity to feel more responsibility for the incident; and these were the adults who seemed most emotionally upset (symptomatic) after the incident. The results have importance for the concept of "need for meaning" and for the issue of "when do people make attributions?"Keywords
This publication has 19 references indexed in Scilit:
- Lightning‐strike disaster among childrenPsychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 1985
- Lightning-strike disaster: Effects on children's fears and worries.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1984
- Confiding in others and illness rate among spouses of suicide and accidental-death victims.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1984
- On the primacy of cognition.American Psychologist, 1984
- Causes and effects of causal attribution.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984
- Esteem and control bases of blame: "Adaptive" strategies for victims versus observersJournal of Personality, 1982
- The Child as Psychologist: Attributions and Evaluations of Defensive StrategiesChild Development, 1981
- Characterological versus behavioral self-blame: Inquiries into depression and rape.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979
- Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": Severe accident victims react to their lot.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1977
- The Human Meaning of Total DisasterPsychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes, 1976