Do We Know How Adversity Impacts Human Development?

Abstract

It is important that we understand the role of significant life events such as failure, adversity, and trauma in human development. However, substantive methodological limitations in research on post-traumatic growth (PTG) has hampered this endeavor. Specifically, with narratives of growth following life challenges likely provide valuable information about the course of lives, retrospective quantitative assessments such as the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) are flawed in multiple ways. We present new data highlighting the flaws of the PTGI as well and further evidence from a selective review that these measures remain dominant despite their flaws.