Children's prosocial resilience in the face of adversity: The role of narrative coherence

• In Event: Is altruism born of suffering? Prosocial development in the wake of adverse life experiences

Abstract

Despite the wealth of research linking adversity exposure to deleterious outcomes across multiple domains of functioning (for reviews, see Hughes et al., 2017, Kalmakis & Chandler, 2015), and specific evidence citing its undermining influence on prosocial behavior (e.g., Kaufman & Cicchetti, 2989; Jaffee et al., 2004), a burgeoning literature is dedicated to examining instances of growth in the wake of adverse life events (Linley & Joseph, 2004; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). One process by which children may evidence growth in the face of adversity is through making meaning of their experiences (Frankl, 1985). The capacity for narrative coherence, which refers to balanced, accurate, and flexible meaning making (Shapiro & Hudson, 1991), allows children to understand their experiences, engage emotion understanding to empathize with others (Berzenski & Yates, 2017), and supports prosocial behavior (Laible et al., 2004; von Klitzing et al., 2007). Thus, this multi-informant longitudinal study examined children’s narrative coherence as a predictor of better-than-expected prosocial outcomes in the wake of early childhood adversity exposure.
Participants were 250 parents and children (50% female, 46% Latinx) drawn from an ongoing study of child development. At age 4, parents reported on children’s prior exposure to various biological (e.g., perinatal insults, major injuries; n = 156), environmental (e.g., residential mobility, community violence; n = 133), and interpersonal (e.g., loss, maltreatment; n = 122) adversities using the Early Trauma Inventory (Bremner, Vermetten, & Mazure, 2000) and sociodemographic interview questions. Adversity events were dichotomized, standardized within domain, and composited to yield a cumulative index of early childhood adversity. At age 4, children completed the MacArthur Story Stems (Emde, Wolf, & Oppenheim, 2003) about parent-child relationships (e.g., discipline, separation, reunion, comfort). Independent raters evaluated narrative coherence on a 10-point scale based on how the child addressed and resolved the story challenge. Narratives were dichotomized as incoherent (0-4) or coherent (5-10) and composited (ICC = .850). Four years later, teachers evaluated children’s prosocial behavior across 5 items (e.g., this child usually shares with others; α = .913) from 1 (never true) to 5 (always true) using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997).

Analyses evaluated predictions from children’s narrative coherence to prosocial resilience, which was indicated by the standardized residual of prosocial behavior regressed on adversity exposure to indicate better- or worse-than-expected prosocial outcomes relative to early adversity exposure, while holding child gender, ethnicity-race, poverty, and IQ constant. Table 1 depicts descriptive statistics and bivariate relations among study variables. Girls demonstrated higher narrative coherence (F = 10.542; p = .002) and prosocial behavior (F = 7.875; p = .006) than boys, but there were no significant differences by ethnicity/race, nor an interaction. Regression analyses were conducted using the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012) in RStudio (Allaire, 2012). Child narrative coherence predicted better-than-expected prosocial outcomes relative to early childhood adversity exposure (see Table 2). These findings suggest that children’s ability to process difficult life events in a way that is flexible, adaptive, and logical to oneself and others contributes to prosocial resilience in the wake of early adversity.

Authors

• Brianne Coulombe, University of South Carolina Aiken
  Presenting Author

• Tuppett M. Yates, University of California - Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author