Cumulative Adversity as a Correlate of Posttraumatic Growth: The Effects of Multiple Traumas, Discrimination, and Sexual Harassment

ABSTRACT

While trauma is, by definition, a necessary precursor of posttraumatic growth, other aspects of individuals’ life experiences affect their ability to cope with trauma, foster resilience, and grow following adversity. Most research on posttraumatic growth overlooks the accumulation of trauma and sub-trauma stressors as possible predictors of growth. In addition, most research on cumulative adversity omits all but the most extreme examples of discrimination and sexual harassment stressors. This exploratory study of 46 university students with trauma histories used measures of posttraumatic growth, trauma, major (sub-trauma) life events, chronic stressors, sexual harassment, and discrimination to examine the relationship between cumulative adversity and the development of posttraumatic growth. We found that cumulative adversity is positively correlated with posttraumatic growth, and that there are important relationships between gender, race, and cumulative adversity. A hypothesized curvilinear relationship between cumulative adversity and posttraumatic growth was not supported. These findings suggest that successfully coping with some amount of sub-trauma adversity may facilitate the development of posttraumatic growth. Additionally, sexual harassment and discrimination were closely linked to the number of chronic stressors; thus, they need to be included in measures of cumulative adversity to more fully represent the experiences of marginalized groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Posttraumatic growth
• cumulative adversity
• trauma
• resilience
• multiple traumas
• chronic stress
• discrimination
• sexual harassment

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their deepest gratitude to the forty-six trauma survivors who participated in this research project, to J. E. Sumerau for thorough feedback on an earlier version of this article, and to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the University of Michigan’s Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, School of Social Work, Department of Sociology, and Center for the Education of Women.