A Social Identity Model of Trauma and Identity Change: A Novel Theory of Post-Traumatic Stress, Resilience and Growth

This project will develop a new social paradigm for trauma research that will allow us to understand post-traumatic stress and facilitate post-traumatic resilience and growth.

This new paradigm holds that changes in social identities – the sense of self we derive from being part of valued groups – are at the heart of post traumatic outcomes.

This breakthrough project will develop a synergistic model explaining how physiological, clinical and socio-political consequences of stress and trauma result from changes in the nature, extent and quality of social identities.

Ground-breaking theory will be supported by ground-breaking methods. (1) Changes in group membership and identification and identity resources will be linked to objective measures of stress and trauma.

Since, to date, emerging evidence of health benefits of group memberships and social identities have largely been demonstrated using subjective measures, this methodological advance is both novel and important. (2) Causal effects of positive and negative change in social identities on stress and trauma outcomes will be examined using longitudinal and experimental approaches, working in both laboratory and community contexts. (3) Qualitative studies will explore whether changes in social identities are associated with post traumatic growth at the personal level as well as the novel idea that trauma can effect change and growth in social identities. (4) Finally, a large scale survey will assess whether trauma, via enhanced social identification, can drive progressive social change.

This new paradigm will transform the conceptualization of trauma from individual to social; deepen our understanding of the physiological and psychological implications of stress and trauma; and link the personal effects of stress and trauma to its wider social and political consequences.