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Event Centrality Moderates Between Unsupportive Social Interactions and Posttraumatic Growth

Previous research has examined the influence of trauma-related Unsupportive Social Interactions (USI) and Negative Posttraumatic Cognitions on Posttraumatic Stress (Southard-Dobbs et al., 2022). In the proposed study we examined relationships among USI, Event Centrality, and Posttraumatic Growth. USI are unhelpful responses received when disclosing a traumatic experience and include minimizing, blaming, bumbling, and distancing (Ingram et al., 2001). Event Centrality (EC) is the extent to which a traumatic event is considered central to one’s identity, a turning point in the life story, and a reference for interpreting other events (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006). Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) is a positive psychological change that occurs as a result of trauma exposure (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). Previous research indicates that PTG is positively correlated with both USI (Durkin, 2010; Balliet, 2010; Balliet et al., 2012) and EC (Allbaugh et al., 2016; Bakaityte et al., 2002; Boykin et al., 2020; Glad et al., 2020; Groleau et al., 2012; Jules et al., 2023; Ryan & Ripley, 2021; Schuettler & Boals, 2011). Previous research has not addressed the association between USI and EC. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that (H1) USI and PTG would be positively correlated. We further hypothesized that (H2) EC would moderate this relationship and that (H3) the positive USI-PTG relationship would be weaker at lower levels of EC and stronger at higher levels of EC. This study represents a secondary analysis of a dataset collected for a larger project. Participants were 472 U.S.-based adults recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mean age = 36.71 years, SD = 12.90; 66.20% female) and were compensated $0.75 for survey completion. The study’s key variables were measured with the Unsupportive Social Interactions Inventory (Ingram, Betz, Mindes et al., 2001), the Centrality of Event Scale (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006; 2007), and the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). We conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test for moderation. In Model 1, USI was a statistically significant predictor of PTG, beta = .228, p < .001, and explained 5.2% of variance in PTG. In Model 2, both USI (beta = .157, p = .002) and EC (beta = .180, p < .001) were statistically significant predictors of PTG and explained 7.8% of PTG variance. In Model 3, the USIxEC interaction term was a statistically significant predictor of PTG, beta = -.573, p = .005. Our hypothesis (H1) that USI is a positive predictor of PTG was supported by Model 1, and our hypothesis (H2) that EC moderates this relationship was supported by Model 3. Simple Slopes Analyses indicated that, contrary to our hypothesis (H3) about the moderating impact of EC, the USI-PTG relationship weakens as the level of EC increases. Our results and previous research indicate that USI impact both positive and negative posttrauma outcomes, suggesting a need for public education. In our presentation, we will address this clinical implication and further examine our results in light of recent research (Boals & McKillip, 2024) on experiencing PTG “because of” versus “despite” a traumatic experience. 

Emma Cox is a junior Psychology major and Human Services minor at Lander University and plans to obtain a masters in family and marriage counseling. She is an honors student, president of Lander’s chapter of Psi Chi, as well as a Research Assistant for Dr. Southard-Dobbs’s stress and cognition lab. 

Moriah Cato is a junior psychology major and human services and child and family studies minor. She is from Columbia, SC. She was formally a teaching assistant for Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Quantitative and Research skills class. Moriah is a research assistant in Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Stress and Cognition Lab. She aspires to become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. 

Annabel Budreau is a senior Psychology major and Criminal Justice minor from Greenwood, SC. Some of her accomplishments include being a part of the Honors College, Psi Chi (The International Honor Society in Psychology), Tau Upsilon Alpha (National Organization for Human Services), Alpha Phi Sigma (The Criminal Justice Honor Society), Sigma Alpha Pi (The National Society of Leadership and Success), the social media coordinator for the Psychology Club, and is a Research Assistant in Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Stress and Cognition Lab. She completed a summer 2024 internship with the U.S. Department of Justice and after graduation she plans to pursue employment in law enforcement. 

Rain Sopha is a senior Psychology major and honors student who is a double minor in General Studio Art and Human Services. They received the William T. Martin scholarship in Spring 2024 and were a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Cleveland’s PSYC 312 Systems of Psychotherapy class. Rain is a senior Research Assistant in Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Stress and Cognition lab and aspires to be an Art Therapist and Licensed Professional Counselor. 

Annaliese Weiss is a senior Psychology and Criminology major, and a Human Services minor from Clemson, SC. She is an undergraduate Research Assistant and Lab Coordinator in Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Stress and Cognition Lab. She has already received a full-time job offer after graduation with Primepoint LLC.   

Daymorrie Butler is a senior Psychology major with an emphasis in Human Services and Child & Family Studies. She is from Edgefield, SC and she is an undergraduate Research Assistant in Dr. Southard-Dobb's Stress and Cognition Lab.

Kimora Sims is a junior Psychology major from Union, South Carolina. She was a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Quantitative and Research Skills class and is now a Research Assistant in Dr. Southard-Dobbs's Stress and Cognition Lab. Kimora is passionate about working with at-risk youth and plans to pursue a career in counseling, aiming to become a Licensed Professional Counselor.

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Does awareness of death undermine or spark meaning in life? 

There is a debate in existential psychology about the effect awareness of personal mortality has on human motivation. One side of the debate suggests that people must chronically deny the reality of death’s inevitability because it makes it difficult for people to find any sense of purpose in existence given that it ends with extinction (Becker, 1973). Conversely, others have argued that people need to confront the reality of death because it is the awareness of the transient nature of life that motivates people to prioritize and pursue their most meaningful goals (Yalom, 2008). The empirical evidence is ambiguous with research showing that thoughts of mortality sometimes create a shift to a more intrinsic motivation (Martin et al., 2004) but other times lead to lower levels of self-reported meaning in life (Routledge et al., 2010). The present poster describes a model informed by Separation Theory (Firestone, 2019) in which the quality of early child-parent dynamics moderates adult reactions to existential anxiety. According to Separation Theory, psychological defenses emerge in childhood in attempts to manage fears about parental rejection and abandonment. Parent-child dynamics shape people’s beliefs about themselves and the world in ways that can lead to the adoption of a cynical outlook on life. These childhood defenses are co-opted as an adult solution to try to minimize death anxiety by adopting the perspective that it is best not to care passionately about things because life itself will not last. The authors of the current presentation present plans for three experiments designed to test a model in which lack of parental warmth leads to insecure attachment style and lack of healthy individuation from parents that in turn leads to a greater prevalence of self-defeating thoughts. Participants with high levels of self-defeating thoughts are expected to respond to reminders of mortality with a decreased engagement with life, decreased authenticity in being true to their own inner sense of self regardless of the expectations of others or society, and increased sense of fatalism that there is little hope of achieving a meaningful and satisfying life. In contrast, participants with low levels of self-defeating thoughts are expected to respond to reminders of death with increased engagement in life, increased authenticity, and decreased fatalism.   

Ava Jones is a senior psychology major with a minor in human services. She is from Spartanburg, South Carolina. While at Lander University, she has been a member of the Psi Chi Honor Society, Lander Psychology Club, and Zeta Tau Alpha Fraternity. She served as social chair for Zeta Tau Alpha for the 2022-2023 academic year. She is a member of Dr. Bassett's Existential Psychology Lab this semester. She also completed a semester-long internship at Anchor Counseling, a private practice in Greenwood, South Carolina. After graduating in May 2025, she plans to attend graduate school to obtain her master's in marriage and family therapy.

Kylie Medlin is a senior Psychology and Human Services double major and is a member of the Honors College. She is also a member of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority, where she served as both the Membership and Education Vice President. She completed a semester-long internship at Synergy Counseling, a local private practice. She is a member of Dr. Bassett’s Experimental Existential Psychology Lab this semester. After graduating from Lander, Kylie is spending a year with the AmeriCorps, specifically in their City Year program in Columbia. She will spend a year in the capital working in underprivileged schools as a mentor to students on academic, social, and emotional levels. After that, she plans on attending graduate school and obtaining a master’s in counseling, with the end goal of eventually becoming a licensed professional counselor. 

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Existential Ink: Mortality Salience Increases Interest in Getting a Tattoo

The present study examines the role managing existential anxiety plays in attitudes about tattoos and motivations for getting tattoos. Previous research has identified expressing individuality, telling a personal narrative about a meaningful life event, and signifying group membership or commitment to an interpersonal relationship as important motives people express for getting tattoos (Wohlrab et al., 2007). These motives seem similar to the three main strategies enumerated by Terror Management Theory as the psychological defenses people use to mitigate anxiety about personal mortality: enhancing self-esteem, investing in cultural worldviews that afford a sense of immortality, and maintaining close personal relationships (Hart et al., 2005). Consequently, to the extent that tattoos provide people with a potential outlet for bolstering existential defenses, reminders of death might increase interest in getting tattoos. In addition, the physical body and its processes have been shown to make people uncomfortable by priming the similarity of humans to other animals and therefore our vulnerability to death (Goldenberg et al., 2019). Further, reminders of death have been demonstrated to increase people’s efforts to symbolically regulate the body and its appearance, for example, by increasing the appeal of cosmetic surgery (Tam, 2013). Therefore, in the current study, we hypothesized that reminders of death would increase people’s positive attitudes about tattoos and their interest in getting a tattoo and that this would be especially true when they had also been primed to think about humans’ similarity to other animals. Ninety-seven participants (Mage = 25.8) were randomly assigned to either a mortality salience condition, in which they responded to two open-ended questions about death, or a control condition, in which they responded to two parallel questions about undergoing a painful dental procedure. Participants were also randomly assigned to either a creatureliness condition, in which they read an essay describing the similarities between people and other animals, or a control condition, in which they read about the difficulties students sometimes have getting the right classes for their schedule. Following a delay created by reading an innocuous passage and filling out a mood checklist, all participants completed a 9-item measure of their attitudes about tattoos and interest in getting a tattoo (Cronbach’s alpha = .95). A 2 (MS/ dental pain) x  2 (creatureliness/ control) ANOVA revealed a main effect for mortality salience, F (1, 93) = 5.25, p = .025, such that participants who had been primed to think about death reported more favorable attitudes about tattoos and more interest in getting a tattoo than did participants who had not been primed to think about death. Neither the main effect for creatureliness nor the creatureliness x mortality salience interaction effect approached statistical significance (Fs < 1). The finding that reminders of death increased interest in tattoos suggests that tattoos might be a means of bolstering psychological defenses against existential anxiety. Implications for Terror Management Theory and the possible positive psychological consequences of tattoos will be discussed.   

Jacob Maddox is a junior psychology major from Simpsonville, South Carolina. He is a Writing Center tutor at Lander University and has been a part of Dr. Bassett’s Existential Psychology Lab for four semesters now. He did a semester-long internship at Project Hope in Greenwood, SC. After graduating from Lander University, he will pursue a career in ABA therapy as a Registered Behavior Technician.

Willow Beshers is a junior psychology major from Greenwood, SC. They are a member of the Lander Honors College, vice president of the Lander chapter of Psi Chi the international honor society in psychology, and a research member of the Existential Psychology Lab under Dr. Jonathan F. Bassett. After college I plan to pursue a graduate degree in clinical counseling.

Lanie Lawson is a junior double major in Psychology and Human Services from Inman, South Carolina. While at Lander University, she has been a Presidential Ambassador, a supplemental instructor for PSYC 101, President of the Psychology Club, and Vice President of the Human Services Club. She has also been a consistent volunteer for the Bear Necessities Food Pantry. She is also the activity coordinator for the Psi Chi Honors Society and is a part of the Campus Activity Board at Lander.. After graduating she will be attending graduate school to obtain her master’s in clinical psychology. 

Eren Milhoan is a junior psychology and human services double major with a minor in child and family studies from Greenville, SC. They have been a part of the Presidential Ambassadors and have been a Peer Leader through Lander’s First Year Experience program. Eren has also been a supplemental instructor for psychology 101 and a Teaching Assistant for psychology 330, which is an upper-level research class. After graduating, they plan to attend graduate school for Clinical Counseling. 

Greyson Wallrath is a junior psychology major with a minor in child and family studies from Charleston, South Carolina. While at Lander University, they have been the President of the Human Services club, Secretary for Psychology club, Historian for Tau Upsilon Alpha, a supplemental instructor for PSYC 101, and a member of Psi Chi honors society. They currently work as a registered behavioral technician where they provide therapy for children who have autism. Greyson plans on attending graduate school to obtain their master’s in ABA Counseling. 

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Examining the relationship between childhood dynamics and self-defeating thoughts in adulthood: An empirical evaluation of Firestone’s Separation Theory

The current poster offers a review of the psychological literature about how childhood interpersonal dynamics can shape patterns of self-limiting defenses in adulthood and describes the results of original ongoing research testing a key assumption of Separation Theory (Firestone, 2019). Separation Theory merges insights from psychodynamic and existential perspectives to explain why people sometimes do self-defeating things that run counter to their intrinsic goals and interests. Firestone (1993) describes the ways in which people develop psychological defenses based on their early life experiences. Over time these defenses will manifest as a critical inner voice, which can promote self-defeating thoughts and self-sabotaging behaviors. Firestone (1990) describes how the critical inner voice is an internalization of parental criticisms that is present to some degree in all adults but asserts that the extent of self-punishing thoughts and self-loathing feelings will vary depending on the amount of frustration and anxiety experienced in childhood. The present study aims to test one of the central tenets of Separation Theory, namely that the intensity of self-critical thoughts that people have as adults is inversely proportional to the quality of their childhood interactions with parents. We will test this claim in a convenience survey of approximately 80-100 college students. Participants will complete measures of the frequency with which they experience self-critical and self-judgmental thoughts. Next, participants will complete measures of attachment style, individuation-separation, and paternal bonding because these constructs are theorized to reflect the results of early experiences in parent-child interactions that presumably shape personal and interpersonal functioning in adulthood. We expect that more frequent self-critical and self-judgmental thoughts will be associated with more insecure attachment styles, less healthy individuation from parents, less parental warmth, and more parental over-controlling.   

Kylie Medlin is a senior Psychology and Human Services double major and is a member of the Honors College. She is also a member of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority, where she served as both the Membership and Education Vice President. She completed a semester-long internship at Synergy Counseling, a local private practice. She is a member of Dr. Bassett’s Experimental Existential Psychology Lab this semester. After graduating from Lander, Kylie is spending a year with the AmeriCorps, specifically in their City Year program in Columbia. She will spend a year in the capital working in underprivileged schools as a mentor to students on academic, social, and emotional levels. After that, she plans on attending graduate school and obtaining a master’s in counseling, with the end goal of eventually becoming a licensed professional counselor. 

Ava Jones is a senior psychology major with a minor in human services. She is from Spartanburg, South Carolina. While at Lander University, she has been a member of the Psi Chi Honor Society, Lander Psychology Club, and Zeta Tau Alpha Fraternity. She served as social chair for Zeta Tau Alpha for the 2022-2023 academic year. She is a member of Dr. Bassett's Experimental Existential Psychology Lab this semester. She also completed a semester-long internship at Anchor Counseling, a private practice in Greenwood, South Carolina. After graduating in May 2025, she plans to attend graduate school to obtain her master's in marriage and family therapy. 

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Gender, Religion, and Death, Oh My!: The Effect of Existential Threat on Transphobia

This study utilized Terror Management Theory (TMT) to investigate how existential anxiety shapes attitudes towards transgender people. TMT has shown that thoughts of death exacerbate rigid thinking, increase reliance on stereotypes about gender and sexuality, and lead people to defend their religious beliefs. Given that essentialist thinking and religiosity are both associated with bias against transgender individuals, reminders of death should intensify this bias. Introductory psychology students completed this study in two parts. In the first part, participants completed measures of various traits including need for closure and religious fundamentalism. At least one day later, participants returned for a second session where they were randomly assigned to either a mortality salience or control condition and then completed measures of transphobia and attitudes towards transgender individuals. They also read two counterbalanced statements, one condemning and the other affirming transgender identities and then indicated which one they most agreed with and explained why. Data collection is ongoing, but we plan to use linear and logistic regression to analyze the data. We predict two 2-way interactions, such that mortality salience will increase bias toward transgender people but only among those high in religious fundamentalism and/or high in need for closure. 

Greyson Wallrath is a junior psychology major with a minor in child and family studies from Charleston, South Carolina. While at Lander University, they have been the President of the Human Services club, Secretary for Psychology club, Historian for Tau Upsilon Alpha, a supplemental instructor for PSYC 101, and a member of Psi Chi honors society. They currently work as a registered behavioral technician where they provide therapy for children who have autism. Greyson plans on attending graduate school to obtain their master’s in ABA Counseling. 

Willow Beshers is a junior psychology major from Greenwood, SC. They are a member of the Lander Honors College, vice president of the Lander chapter of Psi Chi the international honor society in psychology, and a research member of the Existential Psychology Lab under Dr. Jonathan F. Bassett. After college I plan to pursue a graduate degree in clinical counseling.

Lanie Lawson is a junior double major in Psychology and Human Services from Inman, South Carolina. While at Lander University, she has been a Presidential Ambassador, a supplemental instructor for PSYC 101, President of the Psychology Club, and Vice President of the Human Services Club. She has also been a consistent volunteer for the Bear Necessities Food Pantry. She is also the activity coordinator for the Psi Chi Honors Society and is a part of the Campus Activity Board at Lander.. After graduating she will be attending graduate school to obtain her master’s in clinical psychology. 

Jacob Maddox is a junior psychology major from Simpsonville, South Carolina. He is a Writing Center tutor at Lander University and has been a part of Dr. Bassett’s Existential Psychology Lab for four semesters now. He did a semester-long internship at Project Hope in Greenwood, SC. After graduating from Lander University, he will pursue a career in ABA therapy as a Registered Behavior Technician.

Eren Milhoan is a junior psychology and human services double major with a minor in child and family studies from Greenville, SC. They have been a part of the Presidential Ambassadors and have been a Peer Leader through Lander’s First Year Experience program. Eren has also been a supplemental instructor for psychology 101 and a Teaching Assistant for psychology 330, which is an upper-level research class. After graduating, they plan to attend graduate school for Clinical Counseling.