The social psychology of responses to trauma: social identity pathways associated with divergent traumatic responses

Figures & data

Table 1. The relevance of groups and social identities to trauma.

Paper	Type of trauma	Group/identity variables	Methodological Approach	Measures	Sample	Findings
Muldoon & Trew, 2000	Political violence	Membership of gender, religious and socioeconomic groups	Cross sectional survey	Reported Experience of political violence and self-perception profile for children	689 Children aged 7-11	Variation in reported experience of conflict related experiences was linked to group membership. And exposure to political violence was linked to behavioural adjustment.
Muldoon et al., 1998	Political violence	Membership of gender, religious and socioeconomic groups	Comparative analysis of two cross sectional data sets from 1983 and 1984	Perceived stressfulness of conflict related events	10 year old children in 1983 (n = 456) & 1994 (n = 182)	Group level differences in ratings of the perceived stressfulness of events. Perceptions were linked to religious group and changing perceptions of parties to the conflict.
Muldoon, 2003	Political violence	Membership of gender, religious and socioeconomic groups	Longitudinal survey	Perceived stressfulness of conflict related events	Children at two time points age 8 and 11 (N = 113)	Developmental trajectory in perceived stressfulness of conflict events linked to religious group affiliation.
Muldoon & Wilson, 2001	Political violence	Membership of religious and gender groups, ideological commitment to conflict	Cross sectional survey	Reported experience of political violence, self-esteem, psychological well being	Adolescents aged 16 (N = 96)	Young people with a lot of exposure to political violence ideologically committed to the conflict, had comparatively good well-being.
Schmid & Muldoon, 2015	Political violence	National identification	Cross sectional survey	Experience of violence, identity threat, social identification & well being	Representative sample of adults (N = 1515)	Perceived intergroup threats have the most profound effects on social identification and well-being for those subsets of the population with the most exposure to conflict
Muldoon et al., 2009	Political violence	National group membership and national identification	Cross sectional survey	Experience of violence, perceived national identification & psychological well being	Representative sample of adults (N = 3000)	National identity buffered the impact of exposure to trauma for those with national group memberships relevant to the conflict
Naughton et al., 2015	Domestic violence	Identification with family	Cross sectional survey	Exposure to violence between parents, self-esteem, state anxiety	Young adults (N = 355) (mean age 20 years)	Having a strong sense of belonging to the extended family for young people who were exposed to parental IPV improved psychological outcomes
Naughton, O’Donnell, & Muldoon, 2019	Domestic violence	Shared understanding of experience	Qualitative discursive approach	Semi structured interview	Young adults who had indicated they grew up in a home affected by domestic violence	A shared understanding of the situation facilitated communication and adjustment, without this young people felt silenced.
Naughton et al., in press	Domestic violence	No direct measure	Cross sectional survey	Experience of domestic violence, social support, psychological well being	Young adults (N = 465) (mean age 20 years)	Ambiguity about the nature of the domestic violence rather than the extent of the abuse impact social support and well-being.
Gallagher et al., 2014	Experimentally induced stress	(un)shared group membership of stress or challenge message	2 x 2 experimental approach	Perceived stress, cognitive performance cardiovascular reactivity	Undergraduate students (N = 104)	Communication from an ingroup member that a task is challenging rather than stressful reduces perceived stress, cardiac reactivity

Table 2. Summary of studies linking trauma trajectories to social identity change.

Paper	Trauma	Pathway	Measures	Sample	Findings
Muldoon & Downes, 2007	Political violence	Social identity continuity	PTS, exposure to political violence	Representative sample of 3000 adults in Northern Ireland	National identity was related PTSD: Those who saw national identity as less important were more likely to be designated PTSD ‘cases’
Hirsch-Hoefler et al., 2019	Political violence	Social identity continuity	PTS, exposure to political violence, self-categorised religious group	Longitudinal panel Israelis/Palestinians (n = 2572), and Northern Ireland (n = 343).	Context matters to PTS symptoms: positive relationship between exposure to violence and PTS not evident in post-conflict setting
Kearns et al., 2017	Bereavement by suicide	Social identity gain	Crowd Identification, bereavement by suicide, PANAS	Cross sectional panels (n = 2541, n = 2050) and longitudinal sample (N = 131) of adults	Participation in the event had a positive impact because of increased identification with others at the event
Jones et al., 2012	Accidents road traffic, falls & sports injuries	Social identity continuity and social identity gain	General health & PTS symptoms, maintained group and new group memberships	Longitudinal sample 2 weeks and 3 months after acquired brain (n = 62) or orthopaedic injury (n = 31)	New group memberships were associated with reduced PTS symptoms and greater resilience as indicated by psychological well-being.
Walsh, Muldoon, Gallagher and Fortune, 2015, Walsh et al., 2017	Acquired brain injury	Social identity continuity and social identity gain	Anxiety & depression, affiliative & acquired identities, social support	Cross- sectional (n = 53) and longitudinal (N = 32) sample of adults living with acquired brain injury	Identity continuity fostered social support and facilitated the acquisition of new identities with associated benefits for psychological health
Muldoon et al., 2017	Earthquake disaster	Social identity revitalisation	Post traumatic stress symptoms, post traumatic growth, community identity, collective efficacy	Adult of sample of Nepali adults (N = 399)	Survivors with a strong sense of community identity and collective efficacy in response to disaster, reported higher PTG.
Muldoon, Walsh Curtain, Crawley, Kinsella, 2019	Acquired brain injury	Social identity revitalisation	Qualitative semi structured interviews	Adults living with brain injury (n = 15)	Social identity change participation in new social groups linked to a changed sense of self, and connections to others.

Figure 1. Estimated threat identification model for fully representative Northern Ireland sample.

Note: N = 2000, *p < .01, **p < .001, unstandardised betas reported; from Schmid and Muldoon (2015).

Figure 2. Path analysis for model where affiliative identity leads to psychological well-being via social support and active identity.

Note: *p<.05, ** p<.01, ***p <.001, unstandardised betas reported; from Walsh et al. (2015).

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