An Examination of Stage Theory of Grief among Individuals Bereaved by Natural and Violent Causes: A Meaning-Oriented Contribution

2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Holland ◽  
Robert A. Neimeyer
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Stage Theory ◽  
Limited Support

Despite its popularity, few attempts have been made to empirically test the stage theory of grief. The most prominent of these attempts was conducted by Maciejewski, Zhang, Block, and Prigerson (2007), who found that different states of grieving may peak in a sequence that is consistent with stage theory. The present study aimed to provide a conceptual replication and extension of these findings by examining the association between time since loss and five grief Indicators (focusing on disbelief, anger, yearning, depression, and acceptance), among an ethnically diverse sample of young adults who had been bereaved by natural ( n = 441) and violent ( n = 173) causes. We also examined the potential salience of meaning-making and assessed the extent to which participants had made sense of their losses. In general, limited support was found for stage theory, alongside some evidence of an “anniversary reaction” marked by heightened distress and reduced acceptance for participants approaching the second anniversary of the death. Overall, sense-making emerged as a much stronger predictor of grief Indicators than time since loss, highlighting the relevance of a meaning-oriented perspective.

Meaning Reconstruction in the First Two Years of Bereavement: The Role of Sense-Making and Benefit-Finding

2006 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Holland ◽  
Joseph M. Currier ◽  
Robert A. Neimeyer
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Benefit Finding ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Current Investigation ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
High Sense

Contemporary grief theories have highlighted the role of meaning-making in adaptation to bereavement, focusing on two major construals of meaning: making sense of the loss and finding benefit in the experience. The current investigation attempted a conceptual replication of the findings of Davis, Nolen-Hoeksema, and Larson (1998) that suggested that sense-making predicts adaptation to loss in the early period of bereavement, whereas benefit-finding primarily plays an ameliorative role as time progresses. To this end, an ethnically diverse sample of 1,022 recently bereaved college students completed the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG) as well as questions that assessed sense-making, benefit-finding, and the circumstances surrounding their losses. Results only partially replicated the findings of Davis and his colleagues, demonstrating that: 1) time since loss bore no relation to grief complications; 2) sense-making emerged as the most robust predictor of adjustment to bereavement; and 3) benefit finding interacted with sense making, with the fewest complications predicted when participants reported high sense, but low personal benefit, in the loss.

Career Goal Discrepancy, Career Distress, and Goal Adjustment: Testing a Dual Moderated Process Model in Young Adults

2021 ◽  
pp. 106907272110633
Author(s):  
Anna Praskova ◽  
Lisa McPeake
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Career Goal ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Regulatory Processes ◽  
Goal Adjustment ◽  
Career Calling

Identifying a large discrepancy in young people’s career goal progress can lead to distress, activating meaning-making, self-regulatory mechanisms aimed at resolving the uncomfortable situation. We assessed these important career-regulatory processes in a theoretical model by testing the indirect effects of career goal discrepancy on goal adjustment (assimilation and accommodation) via career distress, and assessed the conditionality of these effects based on two moderators (career calling and negative career feedback). In a cross-sectional study, we recruited 287 young adults with a mean age of 23.79 years ( SD = 3.35), and tested complex dual moderated process model (OLS regression). Greater career goal discrepancy was associated with more career distress, and, in turn, less assimilative and more accommodative tendencies. These indirect effects depended on the level of career calling and negative career feedback. The findings can be used to tailor interventions to optimise the consequences of identified gaps in young people’s career progress.

scholarly journals Psychology, Meaning Making, and the Study of Worldviews

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves ◽  
Egil Asprem ◽  
Elliott Daniel Ihm
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Level ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Ways Of Life

To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from “religions” to “worldviews” and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on “big questions” ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans’ evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and world-making and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews.

Edith Stein’s Challenge to Sense-Making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Calcagno
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Edith Stein ◽  
Logical Investigations ◽  
Spiritual Unity

Edith Stein viewed her work with Husserl as a project of collaboration aimed at developing and promoting phenomenology, but rather than conceiving of constitution or sense-bestowal as belonging to the elements of logic and language, as it does in Husserl’s Logical Investigations and his transcendental structures of noesis and noema or in Reinach’s early work in phenomenology (1951), Stein argued that meaning-making must be grounded in both material nature and spiritual realities. Her early work in phenomenology was not only a critique of the perceived shortcomings of her teachers but also a constructive attempt to expand the account of how phenomenology can seize the objectivity of things themselves by showing how consciousness itself is embodied in a psycho-spiritual unity, which Stein called a person.

Support and conflict in ethnically diverse young adults’ relationships with parents and friends

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin L. Moilanen ◽  
Marcela Raffaelli
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
European Americans ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Group Experiences

We examined support and conflict with parents and close friends in a sample of ethnically diverse young adults (European-, Asian-, Cuban-, Latin-, and Mexican Americans). College students ( N = 495) completed six subscales from the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). Friends were rated higher than parents on global support by Asian- and European Americans, but not by the three Latino groups. Regardless of ethnic group, friends and parents provided different types of support, and conflict with parents was more frequent than conflict with friends. No differences due to age, gender, or generation of immigration emerged for European-, Cuban-, or Asian Americans; differences emerged attributable to gender among Mexican Americans (support and conflict), and generation of immigration among Latin Americans (support). Findings reveal ethnic group similarities in how college students’ social relationships are structured, but also highlight unique within-group experiences.

Clinical characteristics of melanoma in an ethnically diverse population of adolescents and young adults.

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e21043-e21043
Author(s):  
Kimberly Ann Miller ◽  
Anthony Pham ◽  
Jacob Stephen Thomas ◽  
Myles G Cockburn ◽  
David Robert Freyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Clinical Characteristics ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Adolescents And Young Adults ◽  
P Value ◽  
Diverse Population ◽  
Acral Lentiginous Melanoma ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Melanoma Patients

e21043 Background: Melanoma is the third most common cancer among adolescents and young adults (AYAs; aged 15-39). Disease characteristics have not been well-described in this age group, particularly among diverse populations. We describe clinical features of AYAs diagnosed with melanoma at a large public hospital serving an ethnically diverse population. Methods: We reviewed medical chart data from patients diagnosed with melanoma between 2001-2016 at Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center. We describe clinical characteristics of AYA patients and compare to non-AYAs (aged ≥40) using Fisher’s exact test. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Of the 273 melanoma patients identified, 47 (17.3%) were AYAs (mean age 32.3; SD±4.45; lower age range 18). The majority of patients were Hispanic (AYA, 53.2%; non-AYA, 51.1%), followed by non-Hispanic whites (AYA, 38.3%; non-AYA, 38.7%). A greater proportion of AYA patients were female (59.6%) compared to non-AYAs (38.2%) (p < 0.01). No AYA patients reported prior skin cancer compared to 19.9% of non-AYAs; 8.5% of AYAs reported family history of melanoma compared to 6.3% of non-AYAs. For all patients, superficial spreading melanoma was the most common histological subtype (AYA, 21.3%; non-AYA, 20.9%). Nodular melanoma was the second most common subtype in AYAs (17.02%) in contrast to acral lentiginous melanoma among non-AYAs (20.9%). Median Breslow depth was 3.0 mm for AYAs and 2.55 mm among non-AYAs. A slightly higher percentage of AYAs were diagnosed with regional disease (31.9%) than non-AYAs (24.4%), and a greater proportion of non-AYAs presented with distant metastases (AYA, 6.4%; non-AYA, 18.7%). The most common site of diagnosis were the extremities for all patients (AYA, 45.0%; non-AYA, 29.3%). Conclusions: We found similar clinical characteristics between AYA and non-AYA melanoma patients. However, we found a statistically significant difference for gender. The increased incidence of melanoma in female AYAs may be driven by biological factors such as sex hormones or genotype, or tanning behaviors. Further research is warranted to identify predictive and prognostic factors of melanoma among diverse AYAs, particularly females.

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