Abstract

Cultural psychology research on the ways individuals conceptualize experiences of suffering has largely focused on cross cultural analyses between groups from vastly different backgrounds and ideologies. Previous cross-cultural approaches differentiate between cultural groups and their ideologically-reinforced interpretations of suffering but lack salient information on how individuals conceptualize and grow from personal suffering contrastingly to their identified group. This study goes beyond previous cultural-psychological studies and takes a multicultural approach to research the intricacies of microcultural groups within the broad culture of the United States by comparing the adverse experiences of minority and majority group members within the diverse culture of the University of Arizona. Understanding the underrepresented individuals’ experiences of suffering is needed due to a lack of literature on the psychology of suffering that explores adverse experiences for those outside the majority population (white, middle socioeconomic status, and cisgender). We hypothesized that minority group members would display more post-traumatic growth (PTG) as a result of having more collectivization of suffering present within their narrative writing compared to majority group members. To measure the presence of collectivization and personalization, we utilized a thematic statistical analysis to interpret the personal suffering narratives. Data for this study is sourced from an experiment conducted by Dr. Daniel Sullivan regarding the impact of historical identity consciousness on the collectivization of personal suffering where 81 participants were asked to write about any stressful life event and prompted to consider personalization or collectivization when evaluating their stressful experience. Using two-way ANOVA testing we were unable to reject the null hypothesis; however, through statistical analysis of participant prompt compliance rates, we were able to establish methodological validity of the original study’s narrative condition prompt used to ask participants to either collectivize or personalize their suffering. The results of this study have implications to support underrepresented communities by bringing awareness to how collectivized or personalized understandings of suffering can lead to culturally informed PTG.

Keywords: collectivized suffering, post-traumatic growth, multicultural analysis

How to Cite:

Figueroa, G., (2024) “Collectivized Suffering and Post-Traumatic Growth”, Arizona Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 10(1), 18-23.