Publication date: Jul 25, 2024

Cognitive strategies like finding benefits during adversity may facilitate coping during collective stressors (like COVID-19) by reducing distress or motivating health protective behaviors. We explored relationships between benefit finding, collective- and individual-level adversity exposure, psychological distress, and health protective behaviors using longitudinal data collected during the COVID-19 era from a representative, probability-based sample of U. S. residents: Wave 1 (N = 6,514, March 18, 2020-April 18, 2020, 58. 5% completion rate); Wave 2 (N = 5,661, September 26, 2020-October 16, 2020, 87. 1% completion rate); Wave 3 (N = 4,881, November 8, 2021-November 24, 2021, 75. 3% completion rate); and Wave 4 (N = 4,859, May 19, 2022-June 16, 2022, 75. 1% completion rate). Benefit finding was common; k-means clustering (an exploratory, data-driven approach) yielded five trajectories: always high (15. 85%), always low (18. 52%), always middle (28. 47%), increasing (17. 79%), and decreasing (19. 37%). Benefit-finding trajectories were generally not strong correlates of psychological distress and functional impairment over time. Rather, benefit finding robustly correlated with health protective behaviors relevant to COVID-19 and the seasonal flu. In covariate-adjusted models, benefit finding positively correlated with more social distancing (β = .24, p < .001) and mask wearing (β = .18, p < .001) at Wave 2 and greater COVID-19 (odds ratio, OR = 1. 23, p = .001) and flu (OR = 1. 29, p < .001) vaccination at Wave 3. Although benefit finding was not generally associated with lower psychological distress during a collective stressor, it correlated with engagement in stressor-related health protective behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Semantics

Original Article