Board Member Howard Tennen Publishes Article in Psychological Science
Board member Howard Tennen published an article in Psychological Science.
Volume 20—Number 7. Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is established as a leader in its field, with a citation ranking/impact factor that places it in the top 10 psychology journals worldwide.
The journal publishes authoritative articles of interest across all of scientific psychology’s subdisciplines, including the behavioral, clinical, cognitive, neural, and social sciences. In addition to these full-length articles, Psychological Science also features summaries of new research developments.
The article is entitled:
Genuine Positive Change?
Patricia Frazier,1 Howard Tennen,2 Margaret Gavian,1 Crystal Park,3 Patricia Tomich,4 and Ty Tashiro5
Abstract: In this study, we evaluated the validity of self reported posttraumatic growth (PTG) by assessing the relation between perceived growth and actual growth from pre- to post trauma. Undergraduate students completed measures tapping typical PTG domains at Time 1 and Time 2 (2 months later).We compared change in those measures with scores on the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) for those participants who reported a traumatic event between Time 1 and Time 2 (n5122). PTGI scores generally were unrelated to actual growth in PTG-related domains. Moreover, perceived growth was associated with increased distress from pre- to posttrauma, whereas actual growth was related to decreased distress, a pattern suggesting that perceived and actual growth reflect different processes. Finally, perceived (but not actual) growth was related to positive reinterpretation coping. Thus, the PTGI, and perhaps other retrospective measures, does not appear to measure actual pre- to post trauma change.
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