7.4.1 Social Identity Revitalisation and Post-traumatic Growth

Support for the idea that trauma can lead to a renewed appreciation of the value of social identities is evident from research. In a study of children who lived through earthquakes in Italy (Vezzali et al., Reference Vezzali, Drury, Versari and Cadamuro2016), the presence of post-traumatic stress symptoms predicted a sense of shared identity over time. Experiences that people find traumatic can facilitate both the emergence of a strong sense of a new social identity (Drury, Reference Drury2018; Vezzali et al., Reference Vezzali, Drury, Versari and Cadamuro2016) as well as the consolidation of existing relevant identities (Muldoon & Downes, Reference Muldoon and Downes2007). In another study, Drury and colleagues found that an emergent sense of common fate among a study of 1,240 survivors of the 2010 earthquake in Chile led to the development of a strong sense of shared identity and that this fed into the provision and receipt of support (Drury et al., Reference Drury, Brown, González and Miranda2016). Mirroring findings from areas affected by political violence (Muldoon, Reference Muldoon2013), rather than PTS creating a desire to disconnect (which might be expected, based on the pattern of symptoms often described), post-traumatic stress symptoms appeared to do the opposite. It creates a desire for connection and a sense of collective community (Vezzali et al., Reference Vezzali, Drury, Versari and Cadamuro2016).

A premise of the social identity approach to health is also that subjective perceptions of belonging to a group are what drives positive adjustment, such that individuals who identify as a member of a particular group and report stronger ties with other group members will reap benefits: ‘the social cure’ (Haslam et al., Reference Haslam, Jetten, Cruwys, Dingle and Haslam2018; Jetten et al., Reference Jetten, Haslam, Haslam, Jetten, Haslam and Haslam2012). The importance of identifying and engaging with a group, as well as the quantity of group memberships (e.g., Postmes et al., Reference Postmes, Wichmann, van Valkengoed and van der Hoef2019; Sani et al., Reference Sani, Jetten, Haslam and Haslam2012), is central to their beneficial impact on health. PTG too can be thought to be derived from the number of group memberships people have as well as the quality of these social connections. In a study of thirty-six people living with acquired brain injury (ABI), Griffin et al. (Reference Griffin, Kinsella, Bradshaw, McMahon, Nightingale, Fortune and Muldoon2022) demonstrated the number of groups and strength of connections combined to predict PTG. Tracking group membership and engagement across two time points, the study showed that the benefit of additional new groups was predictive of PTG because these new group memberships acquired after brain injury were associated with a stronger sense of connectedness.

Multiple group membership is known to be an important basis for health, because those with more group memberships tend to have a greater number and diversity of resources to draw upon during times of change and transition. This research suggests the number of groups a person belongs to (Kinsella et al., Reference Kinsella, Muldoon, Fortune and Haslam2020), as well as the quality of the connections offered through these group memberships, is central to PTG. A related qualitative study illuminates this finding further. In this in-depth interview study with people living with disability in the aftermath of an ABI, respondents spoke of a heightened awareness of group-based resources (e.g., in the form of kindness and generosity from family and community). Participants stated their perspectives changed in the wake of their injuries: they reported a fuller appreciation of their identity-based social resources, including the new identities they forged after their injury, which helped to reduce the isolating effects of their injuries. These new group memberships were also able to offer meaningful activity and a positive sense of self (Muldoon, Walsh et al., Reference Muldoon, Walsh, Curtain, Crawley and Kinsella2019). Respondents indicated that making sense of their injury and the associated disability was something they achieved through interaction with others and participation in group activities. Moreover, their acceptance and adaptation to life post-injury was implicitly linked to changes in the social identity resources that flowed from their group memberships. Indeed, in this context, social contact, and renewed connections with valued groups, whether peers, family or friends, was taken as a marker of recovery. Remarkably, then, these participants, who were often very disabled, focused on their good fortune.

Another study in a different traumatic context provides further evidence of the value of multiple and new group memberships as a platform for PTG (Haslam, Latilla et al., Reference Haslam, Latilla, Muldoon, Cruwys and Kearns2021). Drawing on a sample over 100 largely female (86%) and white participants (88%) recruited through an organisation that supports victims of gender-based violence and abuse in South Africa, this study offered consideration of the impact of physical, emotional and financial abuse and domestic violence or sexual assault. Findings of the study showed that those participants with multiple group membership were those who showed the highest levels of post-traumatic growth. Building on previous research, these findings also suggested that multiple group membership worked in tandem with feelings of personal control and new activist identities to foster growth. So, multiple group membership can facilitate the development of new group memberships in times of disruption and stress (Cruwys et al., Reference Cruwys, Haslam, Dingle, Haslam and Jetten2014). These new groups can be pertinent to the specific life-changing contexts. Specifically, this study appears to offer evidence that multiple group membership offers a pathway to identification with activists, a factor that we have seen previously can reduce traumatic stress (Basoglu et al., Reference Başoğlu, Mineka, Paker, Aker, Livanou and Gök1997; Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Schmid and Downes2009) but here also seems to foster the development of PTG (Haslam, Latilla et al., Reference Haslam, Latilla, Muldoon, Cruwys and Kearns2021).

More recently, Craig et al. (Reference Craig, Haslam, Jetten and Cruwys2022) directly tested the idea that social identity gain, or acquiring new identities, could promote PTG. In a study of 140 adult survivors of the Australian Black Summer bushfires, this study showed that group membership gain predicted PTG over and above demographic factors and the scale of the damage people endured. Further, this study highlighted that new group memberships were associated with a distinct path to PTG, through a process of social identity revitalisation. Social identity revitalisation is a process, not unlike my own experience with close family and friends when depressed, whereby connections are reinvigorated and appreciated more than they had been previously. Whilst existing group memberships in this Australian study then were associated with fewer PTS symptoms, new meaningful group memberships provided bushfire survivors with opportunities to create new identities that became the basis for growth and thriving.

This idea is consistent with another group of studies that suggest that changes in the number or the value ascribed to identities can also be a catalyst for PTG through enhanced sense- or meaning-making. As we have already discussed in Chapter 5, traumatic experience can disrupt identities, and so it can also disrupt associated motivations and meaning in life. One of the reasons that the South African survivors of abuse evidence PTG was perhaps because the newly developed activist identity offered more than new social connections. The link between PTG and social identity–based meaning-making is apparent in a study of sixty female survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Specific benefits accrued to those who could make sense of their experience. Those who believed they had improved relationships or were better parents or had stronger religious identities because of their early childhood adversity were those most likely to show PTG (Wright et al., Reference Wright, Crawford and Sebastian2007). Relatedly, in studies of military personnel who have experienced combat trauma, growth is most likely to emerge where a focus on the value of the collective effort survived. Cacioppo et al. (Reference Cacioppo, Reis and Zautra2011) showed that a focus on the collective goals can buffer the effects of traumatic stressors and help groups of military personnel grow from traumatic experiences. An interpretation that makes sense of personal traumatic experience with reference to a wider cause or collective effort is more likely to deliver PTG.

In summary, following exposure to traumatic events, people often find themselves in a fundamentally different psychological world – one that necessitates an evaluation and overhaul of how we see ourselves. Identities hitherto central to our sense of self can be lost or gained, some are maintained and consolidated, still others undermined (Hefferon et al., Reference Hefferon, Grealy and Mutrie2010; Muldoon, Haslam et al., Reference Muldoon, Haslam, Haslam, Cruwys, Kearns and Jetten2019). New group memberships seem to have a particular value in promoting positive post-traumatic change. So too does the revitalisation of social identities, enhancing the perceived value of groups that were previously perhaps a little neglected. This new sense of social self, enabled by social identity changes, can bring with it a new sense of meaning, purpose and connection to others, often thought of as PTG.

7.4.2 Social Identity Empowerment and Post-traumatic Growth

We know from Chapter 3 there is evidence that those most affected by trauma are those who are most disempowered and that traumatic experience itself can be disempowering. Those most affected by trauma are often on the margins, or made marginal, by their experience. They are most often groups without social, economic or psychological status or resources. Their distress is driven in part by their hopeless and helpless circumstances. However, there is also now emerging evidence that social identities and connections to others similarly affected are the basis of empowering connections and collectives. Here I present evidence that this may also be the basis for growth in response to trauma. This is thought of as a social identity empowerment hypothesis: social identity–based empowerment can be the basis for personal post-traumatic growth.

We turn first to evidence that trauma may be the basis of empowering and agentic social identities. Drury and colleagues highlight how an emergent, shared social identity was evident in a series of research studies with British residents who had been involved in a range of different traumatic events – including the bombing of Harrods in 1983, the fire at Bradford City’s football stadium in 1985, the sinking of the cruise ship Jupiter in 1988, the deaths of ninety-six Liverpool supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 and the crush that occurred at a Fatboy Slim beach party in 2002. One of the most striking findings was the extent to which participants developed a sense of social identification with others as the disasters unfolded. Far from being ‘madding crowds’ or ‘panicked’ response, those caught in these catastrophic circumstances felt a sense of solidarity and connection with others in the same situation. This sense of identification dampened feelings of threat, and identification with others allowed people to feel safer and more secure. This programme of research also indicated that a calm and orderly response, alongside feelings of being capable of responding to the unfolding demands of the situation, was associated with a stronger sense of connection and identification with other victims (Drury et al., Reference Drury, Cocking and Reicher2009).

This sense of having ‘got this’, known as personal efficacy, is important to people’s responses to traumatic events. In a longitudinal study by Kinsella and colleagues (Reference Kinsella, Muldoon, Fortune and Haslam2020), the impact of group membership on ABI survivors’ ability to manage their own emotions, thinking and behaviour was examined. For those with acquired brain injury, reduced regulation and self-efficacy creates difficulties for survivors in family, work and wider social settings. This study found that survivors with more group memberships had better self-regulation capacities, which were linked to better psychological health. This was also found in the previously mentioned study of survivors of gender-based abuse in South Africa (Haslam, Latilla et al., Reference Haslam, Latilla, Muldoon, Cruwys and Kearns2021). An enhanced sense of personal control appeared to be derived from multiple group membership, which in turn was associated with higher levels of personal post-traumatic growth.

Muldoon et al. (Reference Muldoon, Acharya, Jay, Adhikari, Pettigrew and Lowe2017) explored this idea further by looking at whether a sense of shared or collective efficacy in the aftermath of trauma can be important to the development of post-traumatic growth. Collective efficacy is epitomised by the phrase ‘we shall overcome’. In a study of nearly 400 survivors of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, six months after this event had devastated large areas of the country – killing 9,000 people, injuring over 20,000, and leaving more than 3 million people homeless (Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Acharya, Jay, Adhikari, Pettigrew and Lowe2017) – the role of community identity and collective efficacy on PTG (using measures that had been translated and adapted for use with populations with limited literacy) was examined. Reflecting the fact that power and position affect people’s experience of trauma, respondent’s socioeconomic position and, in particular, their position in the caste hierarchy that persists in Nepal affected the extent and nature of trauma experienced was linked to earthquake experience. Equally as hypothesised, community identification and the sense that the community had the ability to overcome trauma, known as collective efficacy, facilitated personal PTG.

The knowledge that groups can empower people adversely affected by traumatic experience gives rise to the tantalising possibility that group-based empowerment is a potential pathway through trauma for the most marginal and disempowered groups. Small groups have been shown to have the capacity to engender identity based on membership in an existing social category (Postmes et al., Reference Postmes, Haslam and Swaab2005). And when there are no pre-existing connections (for instance, amongst victims or survivors), groups often actively engage in negotiations and discussions over who they are, the realities they are collectively facing, and the norms and content that define their group (Reicher et al., Reference Reicher, Cassidy, Wolpert, Hopkins and Levine2006). Communication and debate then help small groups to integrate an understanding of the norms that define their group, including their efficacy beliefs and their opinions about appropriate actions given their circumstances (Thomas et al., Reference Thomas, McGarty and Mavor2009).

Building on this knowledge, with colleagues in Nepal we have been evaluating the value of a community-based approach to supporting those affected by leprosy. Leprosy remains a highly stigmatising illness in Nepal, most often affecting the poorest and lowest-status members of society. The diagnosis can be very traumatic as those affected realise that their lives may be very altered. As well as the potential for illness and disability, those affected are often rejected by their communities, even their own families, losing important social identity–based connections and supports. Using a small group approach centred on the importance of empowerment for these marginalised and low-status people living in rural villages, we have shown how feelings of belonging and identification with self-help groups formed to support those affected by leprosy have a range of positive consequences. These include practical gains the groups are designed to address such as improved health literacy and social participation (Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Trew and Devine2020). Over and above this, these group-based connections mitigate stigma and enhance solidarity and empowerment amongst those affected by leprosy (Jay et al., Reference Jay, Winterburn, Jha, Sah, Choudhary and Muldoon2021; Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Trew and Devine2020). Taken together, our evidence suggests that these small group contexts offer identity resources to reduce stigma-related harm and promoted resilience over at least a six-month time span (Jay et al., Reference Jay, Winterburn, Choudhary, Jha, Sah, O’Connell and Muldoon2022),

Disempowerment and stigma are also associated with being a victim of sexual violence. Stigmatised trauma can damage interpersonal relations and community connections and fundamentally challenge people’s sense of their own autonomy. On the other hand, some survivors report identifying with the stigmatised identity, and this can improve interpersonal relationships, offer a greater sense of community connection. It can also be associated with a growing sense of activism that is reflective of personal PTG. Certainly, although I felt stigmatised when diagnosed with depression, disclosing this to understanding family and friends brought me closer to those who had shared this same experience.

People’s responses to any potential stigmatising disclosure, of course, is pivotal. There is evidence that positive responses from others when speaking about sexual assault can aid people’s recovery (Gueta et al., Reference Gueta, Eytan and Yakimov2020; Strauss Swanson & Szymanski, Reference Strauss Swanson and Szymanski2020). And again, on the other hand, those who experience sexual assault can find that others are unwilling to listen (Gueta et al., Reference Gueta, Eytan and Yakimov2020; Mendes et al., Reference Mendes, Ringrose and Keller2018) or to acknowledge their experiences; they may even be blamed for their own victimisation (Lynch et al., Reference Lynch, Jewell, Golding and Kembel2017). Trauma in the form of sexual assault constitutes a serious challenge to people’s sense of personal safety and autonomy as well as their social relationships (Roberts et al., Reference Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy and Quinn2005). Stigmatised trauma, then, because of its relationship with empowerment and autonomy, is likely to present a particular barrier to post-traumatic adaptation and growth.

Overall, then, the research literature offers a small but promising body of work showing that social identities acquired because of trauma have the potential to drive personal PTG (Muldoon, Haslam et al., Reference Muldoon, Haslam, Haslam, Cruwys, Kearns and Jetten2019; Vezzali et al., Reference Vezzali, Drury, Versari and Cadamuro2016). For some, the low status or a marginal position in society that placed them at risk of trauma will also be associated with stigma and disempowerment. This can be a barrier to positive or growth outcomes. It is likely to interfere with group cohesion and social connections, block personal and collective agency and reduce coordinated action over time. On the other hand, collective and personal efficacy and agency can mitigate feelings of helplessness and the stigma-related harm often experienced by those affected by trauma. Social identity–based empowerment can be derived from multiple group memberships, social connections and participation and engagement with ‘active’ identities. All these social identity–based assets contribute to empowerment and personal growth.

7.5.1 What Is Collective Post-traumatic Growth?

Solnit (Reference Solnit2010) observes in her comprehensive volume A Paradise Built in Hell that it is far more common than one would imagine for communities that experience catastrophic disasters to both recover and thrive (Evans-Campbell, Reference Evans, Davies and DiLillo2008; Sundet & Mermelstein, Reference Sundet and Mermelstein1988). This idea of community growth in response to trauma has been evident in the literature for some time. For the most part, though, those writing about growth in sociology and politics are thinking about changes in social practices or systemic change arising from post-trauma commitment to structural reform of a city or a country. As a social psychologist, I see this response as the product of people’s redefinition of their social selves post-trauma: a changed sense of ‘who we are’ and ‘how we imagine our future’. These changes in the social self include changed sense responsibility and loyalty to valued groups. This shift in thinking about trauma is important to move the field forward.

If we think of the last two years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the swiftness with which new group memberships have emerged and been integrated into common parlance is instructive in this regard. We have ‘anti-vaxxers’, ‘COVID deniers’, ‘maskers’ and ‘anti-maskers’, ‘the COVID anxious’ and ‘COVID vigilantes’, amongst many other new groups that have appeared. In many cases, people are happy to identify in these ways and have integrated these labels into their sense of self. I have been involved in many conversations where people have declared that they are ‘pro-mask’ or ‘pro-science’. But, of course, people are not in and of themselves pro-science; it is their values or beliefs that are this way. In this way we can say group memberships define our sense of self and our values. And this has profound cognitive and motivational consequences (Turner, Reference Turner and Hajfel1982).

Collective post-traumatic growth can be thought of as a form of psychological growth that includes a greater awareness of possibilities and purposes of the groups of which we are members, an enriched sense of oneself as a group member and a stronger sense of connection to other group members. This collective growth, or positive change as a group member, is plausibly an important driver of social and political actions. And it articulates a link between direct personal experience of trauma and changed collective social or political priorities. It forges a path between the personal and the political.

In a recent study, we used public accounts of women who waived their right to anonymity after a conviction of sexual assault or rape was secured in the Irish courts. In such cases of rape and sexual assault in Ireland, victims are guaranteed anonymity. This is a provision in law designed to protect people from the stigma associated with experiencing sexual violence. It highlights that there remains a cost for people who are identified as the victim in rape cases. When we completed our analysis of public statements and media interviews with women (all the victims were women), we examined the reasons these women spoke out. Our analysis of their public discourse highlighted the victims’ descriptions of how a personal trauma, even one as intimate as rape, has psychological consequences that went well beyond individuals’ own health and sense of personal identity. A key feature of the conversations we analysed was that the identity changes highlighted were not always negative. The women talked about an altered and enhanced sense of responsibility to other women and particularly to others who had experienced similar trauma. They felt it imperative to redefine those affected by gender-based violence, of both themselves and others, in the eyes of wider society. They spoke about garnering support, strength and agency from the reaction of others who shared their experience and those who witnessed someone they loved negotiating similar trauma. They indicated that they felt empowered by these social identity–based connections to see social cultural and legal change (Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Nightingale, Lowe, Griffin, McMahon, Bradshaw and Borinca2023)

All these women had this in common. They used their highly publicised court cases and the circumstances in which they found themselves by dint of their trauma to press for social and political change. They identified variously at least in the public sphere as women, as victims, as Irish people and even by occupation. They used these identities to push for redefinition of Irish practices and norms around disclosure, blame, support, sentencing and judicial management of rape and sexual violence. In their public discourse, the women sought to offer a shared alternative vision for supporting and responding to incidents of sexual assault and rape in Ireland. In so doing, they trusted that like-minded others, be they women, victims, families, friends of victims or those working in the health or judicial system, would also be keen to offer appropriate support to protect victims of sexual violence. This identity-based shared vision for Ireland’s future could be thought of as an attempt to ‘grow who we are’ in order to look after ‘all of us’.

These are also issues that have come to the fore in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we can see that the adverse impacts of COVID-19 are linked to status, power and positionality in society, the requirement for action by all is central to the success of public health measures. Living and working conditions are profoundly related to risk and vulnerability (Chung et al., Reference Chung, Dong and Li2020). As such, the crisis is drawing wider health inequalities within and across nations into sharp relief (Atchinson et al., Reference Atchison, Bowman, Vrinten, Redd, Pristera, Eaton and Ward2020) in terms of both preventative medicine and health care. The amplification of the inequality between the rich and the poor that has occurred over the course of the COVID-19 crisis has enhanced the appetite for change in those most directly affected by disability, death and inadequate access to vaccines and health care. In short, the trauma associated with the pandemic has already had political consequences.

Whilst contemporaneous events such as the pandemic, or indeed the climate crisis, may be seen as a tipping point resulting in a sea change in thinking, historical events can also be influential. Linking historical wrongdoing and contemporaneous events is often contentious. Take, for instance, the rise of recent social movements like the #BlackLivesMatter (e.g., Leach & Allen, Reference Leach and Allen2017) or the #MeToo movement. Their momentum was often linked to unresolved experiences of trauma and historical disadvantage of people of colour and women. When people fail to connect present-day events with past traumatic experiences, this can support the status quo. On the other hand, when historical disadvantage is connected to current political events, this can lead to an appetite for profound institutional change (Foran et al., under review; Ghilani et al., Reference Ghilani, Luminet, Erb, Flassbeck, Rosoux, Tames and Klein2017).

Chayinska and McGarty (Reference Chayinska and McGarty2021) argue that ‘political déjà vu’ – perceiving a connection between past events and those that are unfolding – can become an instrument for social change. They studied the responses of 272 Argentinian activists following the disappearance of activist Santiago Maldonado and the perceived silencing of opposition during the 2017 election. This silencing was paralleled by some with the silencing and disappearances during the Argentinian dictatorship of 1976–1983. Those who connected past and present events, feeling political déjà vu, identified more strongly with the political opposition group. In effect, recollection of traumatic memories reconstructed a victim-perpetrator frame through which identities and group memberships were used to view current and past events (Augoustinos & Every, Reference Augoustinos and Every2007). This aligns with the idea that people seek comfort from their identities when confronted with the distressing traumatic memories (see Chapter 4). The pattern also revealed that political déjà vu alongside this pattern of social identification produced the system challenge necessary for collective action to occur (Chayinska et al., Reference Chayinska, Minescu and McGarty2019). Importantly, the analogous perception of past and present traumatic events was related to people’s sense of agency (Drury & Reicher, 2005; Muldoon et al., Reference Muldoon, Acharya, Jay, Adhikari, Pettigrew and Lowe2017; Rimé et al., Reference Rimé, Páez, Basabe and Martínez2010). This shared belief in ‘our capacity’ to effect social and political change is crucial to the mobilisation of collective action.