Poster Presentation International Positive Psychology Association 8th IPPA World Congress 2023

Let’s SMILE! the role of the meaning-making process as a mediator between young people’s identity dispositions and future perspectives during the COVID-19 pandemic  (#920)

Michela Zambelli 1 , Semira Tagliabue 2
  1. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
  2. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia, Italy

Background

The process of meaning-making grounds in the situational experiences lived by individuals that push them toward searching and finding meaning in life. The collective traumatic experience of the COVID-19 pandemic shattered young adults’ life, determining an increased risk of psychological maladjustment that turned out in young people losing their positive perspective of the future. 

Aims

The present work intends to test the hypothesis that the orientation toward the future expressed by emerging and young adults facing the COVID-19 pandemic was related to their identity dispositions (being in a committed or exploration identity path) through the mediating role of the situational activation of meaning-making processes (presence, search for meaning), and meaning-made outcomes (post-traumatic growth, intrusive rumination). 

Method

369 young Italian adults (Mage= 25.8, DS = 17.4; 78.3% woman; 45.2% student) participated in an online survey, and completed the SMILE (Zambelli & Tagliabue, 2023) assessing their perception of presence and search for meaning during the pandemic; measures of identity (DIDS; Luyckx et al., 2008), rumination (ERRI; Cann et al., 2011), post traumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996), and future perspectives (dark future scale, Zaleski, et al., 2019; Adult Hope scale, Snyder et al., 1991).  

Results

The model was tested with SEM in Mplus and resulted in adequate fit (Chi2(6)=28.6,p<.001;RMSEA=.12;CFI=.98;SRMR=.04). Being a committed identity path was a protective factor against negative future perspectives and promoting hope, conditionally to finding meaning in life during the pandemic and having grown from the trauma. Search for meaning partially mediated the relation between exploratory identity and bothnegative future perspectives and hope, especially if their search for meaning degenerated into an intrusive rumination on the pandemic.

Conclusion

Findings confirmed the mediating role of the meaning-making between identity dispositions and future perspectives during a traumatic condition. Implications move toward a generation of a meaning-making model that integrates the developmental and the stress and trauma frameworks.

  1. Zaleski, Z., Sobol-Kwapinska, M., Przepiorka, A., & Meisner, M. (2019). Special Section: Time in Perspective Development and validation of the Dark Future scale. Time & Society, 28(1), 107–123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X16678257
  2. Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigmon, S. T., et al. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60 (4), 570-585.
  3. Cann, A.,Calhoun, L., Tedeschi, RG., Triplett, KL., Vishnevsky, T. & Lindstrom, CM. (2011). Assessing posttraumatic cognitive processes: the Event Related Rumination Inventory, Anxiety, Stress, & Coping: An International Journal, 24:2, 137-156, https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2010.529901
  4. Tedeschi, R.G., & Calhoun, L.G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455-471. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02103658
  5. Luyckx, K., Schwartz, S. J., Berzonsky, M. D., Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Smits, I., et al. (2008). Capturing ruminative exploration: Extending the four-dimensional model of identity formation in late adolescence. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 58–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.04.004
  6. Zambelli, M. & Tagliabue, S. (2023). The Situational Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMILE): development and validation studies. under review
  • Please select up to 3 keywords from the following list to best describe your submission content: Coping and Emotion Regulation, Meaning and Purpose, Resilience and Posttraumatic Growth