Spirituality and religiosity can play key roles in individual lives through influencing health, social relationships, political views, as well as many other facets (Newberg, D'Aquili & Rause, 2001; Milevsky & Levitt, 2004; Hirsh, Walberg & Peterson, 2013). As important as religious and spiritual beliefs are to societies, cultures, and individuals, little is known about which psychological factors determine choices of faith. Although there are likely many determinants of religious, spiritual, atheist or agnostic beliefs, this study explored four possible factors: critical thinking skills, need for cognition, need for emotional comfort/security, and need for closure. Participants included an undergraduate sample and a community sample. It was hypothesized that religious and spiritual individuals will have lower critical thinking skills, lower needs for cognition, higher needs for emotional comfort/security and higher needs for closure than agnostic and atheist individuals. Hypotheses also included potential interactions between these variables in predicting each faith path. Religiosity was measured using the I/E Religious Orientation Scale - Revised (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989) and Spirituality was measured utilizing the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS) (Fetzer Institute, 1999). These two faith paths were also self -reported by participants after definitions of each were provided. Atheist and Agnostic beliefs were …

As part of an effort to understand psychological consequences among family members of patients sustaining a traumatic injury, medical research has turned to the role of resilience – or the ability to bounce back from and maintain psychological well-being in the wake of an adverse event— in mitigating the potential distress (i.e., depression and burden) of caregiving (Bonanno, 2004; Roberson et al., under review). This study sought to examine the ability for trait-resilience to predict trajectories of distress over the course of a year among 124 family members and loved ones of patients admitted to a Level I Trauma Center. A cross-lagged path model examining resilience, burden, and depression at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months after injury showed that, while depression strongly predicted later burden, resilience was not a significant predictor of either outcome in the model. When depression and burden were subjected to a person-centered analysis (i.e., latent growth curve analysis), two major classes were identified: caregivers with high, chronic distress (33% of the sample) and low-moderate distress that declined over time. A three-class solution for caregiver burden further identified a moderate, increasing trajectory class. Predictive discriminant analyses revealed that trait-resilience was a major differentiating trait between class …

There are many identified factors that correlate with whether an individual experiences adverse symptoms following a traumatic event. Research indicates that betrayal, where the victim is betrayed by another individual, may be one of these factors. Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT) posits that betrayal during trauma increases the likelihood of developing adverse psychological symptoms. BTT objectively dichotomizes traumas as high betrayal or low betrayal traumas based on details of the event. Though literature finds those who experience high betrayals experience more severe symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and dissociation than those who experience low betrayals, this objective classification is limited as it is based solely on the circumstances of the trauma and does not give the victim the option of indicating whether they felt betrayed. We believe perceptions of betrayal, whether the event meets the objective criteria of betrayal put forth by BTT or not, is an important predictor of trauma-related outcomes. This study (N = 244) found that perceived betrayal predicts symptoms of PTSD and depression independently, as well as when controlling for objective betrayal, dependence on the perpetrator, event centrality, anxiety, and dissociation. These findings indicate perceived betrayal is a unique construct that should be included in the operationalization …

Understanding temporal relations among posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom dimensions has received increasing attention in research. However, current findings in this area are limited by group-level approaches, which are based on inter-individual variation. PTSD is a heterogeneous syndrome and symptoms are likely to vary across individuals and time. Thus, it is important to examine temporal relations among PTSD symptom dimensions as dynamic processes and at the level of intra-individual variation. The aim of the present study was to capture temporal dynamics among PTSD symptom dimensions at an individual level using unified structural equation modeling (uSEM). World Trade Center (WTC) 9/11 responders (N = 202) oversampled for current PTSD (18.3% met criteria in past month) were recruited from the Long Island site of the WTC health program. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), PTSD symptoms were assessed three times a day over seven consecutive days. The person-specific temporal relations among PTSD symptom dimensions were estimated with individual-level uSEM. For the sample as a whole, hyperarousal played a key role in driving the other three symptom dimensions longitudinally, with the strongest effect in intrusive symptoms. However, daily temporal relations among PTSD symptoms were idiosyncratic. Although hyperarousal was a strong predictor of subsequent symptom …