New Groups and Post-Traumatic Growth: Experimental Evidence That Gaining Group Memberships Supports Recovery From Natural Disaster

Abstract

This paper provides the first experimental test of whether two social identity model of traumatic identity change processes—(i) group membership gain, and (ii) group membership continuity—predict post-traumatic growth (PTG) and post-traumatic stress (PTS) via social identity revitalization. Participants (N = 210, Mage = 49.59 years) were adult flood survivors who were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: group membership gain, group membership continuity, or a weather control. Participants then completed measures of PTG, PTS, and social identity revitalization. Participants in the group membership gain condition reported greater social identity revitalization, compared to the group membership continuity and control conditions. Social identity revitalization, in turn, predicted PTG, and the indirect effect of group membership gain on PTG was significant. We concluded that gaining new group memberships play a role in supporting natural disaster recovery by fostering positive reappraisals of the disaster via social identity revitalization.