Symposia
Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders and Disasters
Adam P. McGuire, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
The University of Texas at Tyler
Chandler, Texas
A core symptom cluster of p</span>osttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) includes negative alterations in cognitions and mood. In addition to strong negative beliefs, people with PTSD also engage in maladaptive cognitive response styles to positive emotions, such as emotional numbing (Fonzo, 2018). A potential pathway to target this problematic cognitive strategy is the use of positive psychology interventions designed to elicit strong positive emotions. One emotion that could bear relevance and offer counteracting effects is moral elevation—feeling inspired after witnessing someone perform a virtuous act, which is linked with autonomic physiological arousal and motivations to pursue self-improvement and social engagement activities. The purpose of this study is to examine positive and negative cognitive responses to positive affect in a pilot trial of a web-based moral elevation intervention. Veterans who reported significant distress about a potentially morally injurious event and significant PTSD symptoms were randomized into an intervention condition or a control condition (n=48). Both conditions completed 8 sessions over 4 weeks that included brief measures assessing recent cognitive and emotional experiences since the last session. In the intervention condition, veterans completed exercises to induce elevation, reflect on their reaction, and set goals to engage in positive activities. Control condition sessions were limited to completing measures. Using multilevel modeling, we examined repeated measures data during the trial and focused on three subscales of the response to positive affect scale: rumination on positive mood and somatic experiences (emotion-focus), rumination on positive aspects of the self and pursuit of personally relevant goals (self-focus), and thoughts intended to dampen positive moods (dampening). Three models were fitted with condition as the predictor and subscale scores as separate outcomes. Results indicated veterans in the elevation condition reported more positive rumination than the control condition for both emotion-focus (b=2.56, SE=1.10, p=.026) and self-focus styles (b=2.87, SE=0.86, p=.002). However, there was no group difference in the use of the dampening cognitive style. These results provide preliminary evidence that moral elevation exercises might contribute to cognitive approaches that facilitate engagement with positive emotions in a sample predisposed to maladaptive cognitive styles and emotional numbing tendencies. Future directions and implications will be discussed.