A hero's journey tale: Experimentally altering perceived posttraumatic growth via cultural expectation primes

Introduction: Burgeoning research has demonstrated that self-reports of posttraumatic growth assess perceived posttraumatic growth (PPTG), which should be disambiguated from genuine growth. One possible reason trauma survivors report PPTG is embedded cultural expectations that individuals should grow from adverse events. Contributing to this cultural expectation are popular hero's journey stories in which a protagonist overcomes adverse events, transforming the protagonist into a hero, which mimic stories of posttraumatic growth. Methods: In two experiments, we experimentally tested whether priming participants with cultural expectations of trauma-related growth via popular hero's journey movies would result in subsequent increases in PPTG. A pilot study confirmed our selection of hero's journey and control movies. In Experiment 1, 669 participants were primed with either a hero's journey movie or a control movie, then subsequently reported PPTG for their own most distressing event. Results: Results revealed that participants primed with a hero's journey movie reported significantly higher levels of PPTG. This effect was qualified by an interaction such that for participants with high levels of identification with the protagonist, the experimental prime led to increased levels of PPTG; for participants with low levels of identification with the protagonist, the experimental prime led to decreased levels of PPTG. In Experiment 2 we replicated this interaction in an online community sample via MTURK. Discussion: Our results provide evidence that PPTG levels can be manipulated via experimental primes and underscore the role of cultural expectations. Specifically, cultural expectations can inspire PPTG for some, but discourage PPTG for others.