Construing Benefits from Adversity:

Adaptational Significance and

Dispositional Underpinnings

Glenn Affleck and Howard Tennen

University of Connecticut School of Medicine

ABSTRACT The discovery of benefits from living with adversity has been
implicated in psychological well-being in numerous investigations, is pivotal
to several prominent theories of cognitive adaptation to threat, and can be
predicted by personality differences. This article summarizes the prevalence
and adaptive significance of finding benefits from major medical problems,
locates the place of benefit-finding in stress and coping theories, and examines
how it may be shaped by specific psychological dispositions such as optimism
and hope and by broader personality traits such as Extraversion and Openness
to Experience. The distinction between beliefs about benefits from adversity
(benefit-^m/ing) and the use of such knowledge as a deliberate strategy of
coping with the problem {hene^t-reminding) is underscored and illustrated by
daily process research on coping with chronic pain.

Right after she was born, I remember having a revelation. Here she
was, only a week old, and she was teaching us something—how to

Many of the published and unpublished findings reported in this article come from
studies funded by National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Diseases
Grant AR-20621 to the University of Connecticut Multipurpose Arthritis Center. We
are grateful for the collaboration of Susan Urrows and Micha Abeles and for the as-
sistance of Pamela Higgins and Debra Begin with data collection and management.
We are also indebted to Jeff Siegel of National Technology Services for his help in
programming the electronic diaries described in this article and to Saul Shiffman for
his assistance with protocol development. Finally, we appreciate the assistance of Jerry
Suls, Shelley Taylor, and James Coyne in revising an earlier version of the manu-
script. Address correspondence to Glenn Affleck, Department of Community Medicine
MC-6205, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT 06030. E-mail:
AFFLECK@NSOl.UCHC.EDU.

Jourrml of Persormlity 64:4, December 1996.

Copyright © 1996 by Duke University Press.
900 Afileck and Tennen

keep things in their proper perspective, how to understand what's

important and what's not. I've learned that everything is tentative,
that you never learn what life is going to bring. I've come to realize
that I shouldn't waste any more time worrying about the little things.
Perhaps this is the way it was meant to be. Maybe I wasn't intended
to have children. It has made me a stronger person, and has made me
appreciate children so much more.
Living with this disease has taught me so many precious things that
I wouldn't have learned if I were healthy. I guess the most important
things it has taught me are to appreciate what life can hold for you
every day and to be grateful for the loving relationships in your life.
This young father of an acutely ill newborn, this middle-aged woman
with impaired fertility, and this older woman with rheumatoid arthritis
know that adversity, no less than prosperity, can change us for better as
well as for worse. A casual observer can easily appreciate the toll that
such adversities can take on someone's physical and psychological well-
being. But even a close observer may miss their perceived benefits,
gains, and advantages.
The search for uplifting meaning from threatening experiences is
pivotal to a number of prominent theories of psychological reorgani-
zation in the aftermath of traumatic events. These include Taylor's
thesis of selective evaluation as a response to adversity (Taylor, Wood,
& Lichtman, 1983) and her more general theory of cognitive adap-
tation to threat (Taylor, 1983); Janoflf-Bulman's analysis of assump-
tive world restoration following victimization (Janoff-Bulman, 1992)
and her more general theory of deep-seated personal change (Janoff-
Bulman & Schwartzberg, 1991); Rothbaum's two-factor model of per-
sonal control (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982); and Thompson's
taxonomic theory of psychological control appraisals (Thompson, 1981,
1985). These formulations all share the premise that adversity can lose
some of its harshness through cognitive adaptations—including finding
the good in bad events—which can restore comforting views of our-
selves, other people, and the world. These adaptations can even nourish
the conviction that we are in some ways better oflFthan we were before.
Accumulating evidence that the ability to detect personal gains from
threatening experiences may enhance psychological and physical well-
being supports these theories' validity and value to stress and coping
researchers.
Construing Benefits from Adversity 901

Our own research program has examined at length the role of finding
benefits in adapting to major medical problems. Thus, we will restrict
most of our empirical coverage of this phenomenon to medical adver-
sity. We begin by summarizing the prevalence of construing benefits
from major medical problems and subsequent documented relations
with psychological and physical adjustment. Next, we locate the place
of benefit-finding in selected theories of coping with trauma and ad-
versity. We review theory and research concerning the role personality
factors may play in finding benefits in adversity and the connection of
these factors to successful adjustment. Finally, we draw an unnoticed
distinction between benefit-related cognitions that are adaptive beliefs
about the consequences of adversity, which we label benefit-finding,
and those that serve as coping strategies during difficult times, which we
call benefit-reminding. This distinction reflects more than alternative
empirical foci: It captures a fundamental difference between the way
adaptive beliefs and coping strategies are both conceptualized and mea-
sured in the stress and coping literature (Tennen & Affleck, in press-a).
To underscore this point, we will accent the utility of a process-oriented
approach to studying benefit-finding, benefit-reminding, and their dis-
positional underpinnings.

Prevalence a n d Adaptational Correlates of

Benefit-Finding in Major Medical Problems
For a variety of reasons, many investigators of the psychological as-
pects of major medical problems have asked their research participants
to describe any gains, benefits, or advantages they have found after
weeks to years of contending with these problems. This evidence of
benefit-finding derives in large part from answers to direct interview
questions about what, if any, positive consequences have ensued from
their experience. Less frequently, participants have answered multi-
item questionnaires in which they endorse their agreement with certain
benefits that could have accrued from their experience (Affleck, Ten-
nen, Rowe, & Higgins, 1990; Tennen, Affleck, Urrows, Higgins, &
Mendola, 1992).
A review of this literature unearths a wide array of medical prob-
lems for which nearly all or more than a majority of informants cited
benefits or gains from their adversity. This evidence comes from studies
of heart attack survivors (Affleck, Tennen, Croog, & Levine, 1987);
women with breast cancer (Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood, 1984); sur-
902 Affleck and Tennen

vivors of spinal cord injuries (Bulman & Wortman, 1977); individu-

als who have lost their sense of taste and smell (Tennen, Affleck, &
Mendola, 1991a); women with impaired fertility (Abbey & Halman,
1995; Tennen, Affleck, & Mendola, 1991b); patients with chronic rheu-
matic diseases (Affleck, Pfeiffer, Tennen, & Fifield, 1988; Liang et al.,
1984); stroke victims and their caregivers (Thompson, 1991); parents
of infants hospitalized on newborn intensive care units (Affleck, Ten-
nen, «fe Gershman, 1985; Affleck, Tennen, & Rowe, 1991); and mothers
of children with insulin-dependent diabetes (Affleck, Allen, Tennen,
McGrade, & Ratzan, 1985), among others.
Several categories of perceived benefits cut across these problems
and echo what has been found in studies of other types of threaten-
ing events (e.g., Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Tedeschi & Calhoun, in press;
Thompson, 1985). One common theme is the strengthening of relation-
ships with family and friends. Another is the perception of positive
personality change, such as the development of greater patience, tol-
erance, empathy, and courage. Yet another common benefit appraisal
is a valued change in life's priorities and personal goals. Other bene-
fits appear relatively specific to health-related adversity. For example,
many men who have had heart attacks believe that this event taught
them a lesson about the importance of health behavior practices to live
a long life (Affleck et al., 1987), and many mothers claim that their
infant's hospitalization on an intensive care unit opened their eyes to
the dedication and caring attitudes of health care professionals (Affleck
et al., 1991).

Is benefit-finding a proxy for denial? Before summarizing evidence

of the adaptational consequences of benefit-finding, we must address
briefly the possibility that benefit-finding signals denial and thus may
prove maladaptive over the long run because it interferes with effec-
tive coping strategies for accepting the full severity of the problem
(Lazarus, 1983). If benefit-finding stems from or supports psychologi-
cal denial, then any associations found with reports of psychological
well-being might reflect a reluctance to concede the severity of the
stressor as well as one's emotional distress (Breznitz, 1983). This issue,
framed in broader terms of the relation between "positive illusions"
and mental health, was the subject of a fascinating exchange of views
between Taylor and Brown (1994) and Colvin and Block (1994).
Does finding good things in aversive experiences imply the denial
of such experiences' harmful aspects? Tedeschi, Calhoun, and Gross
Construing Benefits from Adversity 903

(1993) countered this view with findings from a study of college stu-
dents' appraisals of recent psychological traumas. Scores on a ques-
tionnaire measuring the perception of benefits from these events were
positively correlated with ratings of both the event's negative and posi-
tive impact on their lives. In a study of parents of infants treated on a
newborn intensive care unit, a questionnaire assessment of perceived
benefits from this crisis was uncorrelated with a companion instrument
measuring its harmful aspects (Affleck et al., 1990). Thus, the existing
evidence, which clearly deserves more study, refutes the hypothesis that
any apparent positive adaptational consequences of finding benefits in
traumatic experiences come at the cost of denying their adverse effects.

Adaptational outcomes of benefit-finding. Positive adaptational out-

comes of benefit-finding are evident in many self-report indicators of
psychological well-being. Studies using valid and reliable adaptational
outcome measures provide evidence that benefit-finding relates to less
negative affect in cancer patients (WoUman & Felton, 1983); less de-
pression and greater meaningfulness in life in stroke victims (Thomp-
son, 1991); less psychological distress in infertile women (Abbey &
Halman, 1995; Tennen et al., 1991b) and people who have lost their
sense of taste and smell (Tennen et al., 1991a); superior psychologi-
cal adjustment in women with breast cancer (Taylor et al., 1984); and
less mood disturbance and intrusive thoughts in mothers of acutely ill
newborns (Affleck et al., 1985). Because it is difflcult to disentangle
temporal precedence in these cross-sectional studies, these findings can
also mean that those who are better adjusted to their problems find it
easier to construe positive aspects of their experience. What's more,
both the ability to find benefits and reports of positive adjustment may
be influenced by differences in the severity of the problem itself.
In a rare longitudinal study of the predictive significance of benefit-
finding, Affleck et al. (1991) asked mothers before their child's discharge
from a newborn intensive care unit whether they had found any bene-
fits from their child's hazardous delivery and prolonged hospitalization.
Seventy-five percent of the mothers cited at least one benefit, including
improved relationships with family and friends, the importance of keep-
ing life's problems in perspective, increased empathy, positive changes
in their personality, and the conviction that their child was now more
precious to them. Mothers who cited no benefits from their child's new-
born intensive care reported more mood disturbance and psychological
distress 6 and 18 months later, even when their mood at the time they
904 Affleck and Tennen

were asked to describe any benefits was partialled from these relations.
The ability of benefit-finding to predict later emotional well-being was
independent of an objective index of the severity of the child's medical
problems, echoing what Thompson (1991) found in a study of stroke
survivors and Tennen et al. (1991a) documented in a study of victims of
taste and smell loss. Thus, preliminary evidence suggests that benefit-
finding predicts emotional well-being and is unconfounded by objective
measures of the severity of the problem.
These mothers' ability to find benefits not only predicted their own
well-being but also their child's developmental test scores 18 months
later. This relation remained significant even when we controlled for
mothers' predischarge mood, age, education, parity, and the severity
of the infants' perinatal medical problems. This discovery is critical
because it extends the positive outcomes of benefit-finding beyond the
realm of self-report.
Another demonstration of the predictability of objective outcomes
from earlier benefit-finding comes from a cohort of heart attack sur-
vivors who participated in an unusually long prospective study (Affleck
et al., 1987). After 7 weeks of recovery from their initial heart attack,
58% of these men cited benefits, most prominently anticipated changes
in lifestyle to increase enjoyment, valued lessons about the importance
of health behavior, and positive changes in their philosophy of life and
basic values. Eight years later, those who had construed benefits were in
significantly better cardiac health and were less likely to have suffered a
subsequent attack. These predictive relations remained significant even
after controlling for their age, socioeconomic status, and severity of
their initial attack.
In summary, research on the adaptational correlates of benefit-finding
among individuals facing serious medical problems is beginning to
document its unique ability to predict emotional well-being. This, along
with initial evidence that benefit-finding may also confer long-term
health benefits, is good reason to investigate why positive reapprais-
als of threatening events are related to positive adaptational outcomes.
Tbere is no shortage of positive outcome possibilities in the health
arena, ranging from the invigoration of health behavior changes (Affleck
et al., 1987) to improvements in health-related social support (WoUman
& Felton, 1983). In line with the theme of this special issue, we will
examine the possibility that individuals bring life-long characteristics
to adverse experiences that shape both their capacity to find benefits
and their successful adjustment.
Construing Benefits from Adversity 905

But first we will review briefly the significance of benefit-finding for

several general theories of coping with trauma and adversity. Although
these theories have often been ignored as an explicit framework for the
empirical studies we have reviewed to this point and have not been well
integrated with research on personality and health, they provide a useful
scaffolding for the integration of stress and coping theory, personality
theory, and research on benefit-finding in adversity.

The Place of Benefit-Finding in Theories

of Coping with Adversity
Research on the prevalence and correlates of benefit-finding acquires
meaning from a number of theories of psychological reorganization in
the wake of adversity. For example, Taylor et al. (1983) list construing
benefits from the event as a selective evaluation that helps victims to
"devictimize" themselves by mitigating feelings of stigmatization and
restoring their self-esteem. In a similar vein, Thompson (1985) includes
the discovery of benefits in her taxonomy of methods of psychological
control that mitigate the aversiveness of threatening events.
To understand the adaptive value of benefit-finding under threat is
to appreciate first the ways in which major adversities can threaten
our most treasured assumptions about ourselves and the world. Janoff-
Bulman and Frieze (1983) remind us that "from day to day . . .
[we] operate on the basis of assumptions and personal theories that
allow [us] to set goals, plan activities and order [our] behavior" (p. 3).
These basic assumptions—also referred to as our "higher-order postu-
lates" (Janoff-Bulman & Schwartzberg, 1991) and "assumptive world"
(Parkes, 1975)—include seeing ourselves as having control over events
and being relatively invulnerable to harm; viewing the things that hap-
pen to us as orderly, predictable, and meaningful; and regarding our-
selves as worthy and other people as benevolent. These "worldviews"
are what Watzlawick (1978) calls "second-order realities" as opposed
to the first-order reality of the world that exists independent of our
appraisals, and as such they belong squarely in the constructivist tradi-
tion of psychological functioning and change (e.g., Keeney, 1987; von
Glaserfeld, 1984).
According to these theories, we are rarely aware of the fundamen-
tal elements of our assumptive world; the minor disappointments and
failures of everyday life seldom bring them to light. Fundamentally,
our assumptive world consists of conservative cognitive schemas that
906 Affleck and Tennen

resist change and disconfirmation (Janoff-Bulman & Schwartzberg,

1991). This taken-for-granted world is revealed and questioned, how-
ever, when a personal catastrophe challenges its validity. As both Janoff-
Bulman and Taylor have so eloquently documented in numerous works,
much of the shock and confusion people experience in the immedi-
ate aftermath of victimization appear to stem from threats to cherished
assumptions of mastery, meaning, and self-worth.
This very questioning of basic assumptions is what sets the stage for
deep-seated personal change through the task of rebuilding an assump-
tive world accommodated to new realities (Janoff-Bulman & Schwartz-
berg, 1991). "By engaging in interpretations and evaluations that focus
on the benefits and lessons learned," writes Janoff-Bulman, "survivors
emphasize benevolence over malevolence, meaningfulness over ran-
domness, and self-worth over self-abasement" (1992, p. 133). Benefit-
finding and other positive appraisals are what Taylor (1983) has made
the centerpiece of her theory of cognitive adaptation to threatening
events.
Rothbaum et al.'s (1982) two-factor model of personal control pro-
vides another view of the cognitive reappraisal process that may in-
volve benefit-finding. Rothbaum et al. view the discovery of positive
meaning in adversity as a "secondary control" appraisal, one that pro-
vides a comforting alternative to feelings of helplessness from the loss
of a sense of primary or direct personal control over an uncontrol-
lable event. Their formulation predicts that secondary control appraisals
should wax as primary control wanes.
We know of only one published study that has tested this "fallback"
hypothesis with a required longitudinal design. McLaney, Tennen, Af-
fleck, and Fitzgerald (1995) found that among men and women with
impaired fertility, changes in primary control over conception during a
14-month period did not result in changes in benefit-finding. However,
benefit-finding did increase when individuals' expectation of concep-
tion diminished during this time. The logic of the fallback hypothesis
can be applied equally well to charges in outcome expectancies: When
individuals encounter repeated failure and become more pessimistic
about achieving a desired outcome, they will find more benefits in the
situation as a way of enhancing a sense of secondary control.
These general theories on coping with adverse events incorporate
benefit-finding as an adaptive response, but they do not shed any light
on the personological characteristics that may make this response to
Construing Benefits from Adversity 907

threat more or less likely. We turn next to the part that personality may
play in the process of benefit-finding in adversity.

Personality and Dispositional Correlates

of Benefit-Finding
The foregoing review of research and overview of theory might foster
the impression that benefit-finding in adversity is so prevalent that it
spans individual differences in personality traits. Yet many survivors
of adversity do not construe positive consequences from their plight,
and these individuals could well differ in general or specific personality
characteristics. Further, certain dispositional characteristics could pre-
dict the number and types of benefits construed from adversity, or that
no benefits will likely occur.
There are relatively few published empirical studies relating disposi-
tional influences to benefit-finding, and even fewer that address explicit
theories. Over the years, authors have variously linked benefit-finding
to an internal locus of control (WoUman & Felton, 1983); a persistent
belief in a just world (Kiecolt-Glaser & Williams, 1987); dispositional
optimism (Tennen et al., 1992; Thompson, 1985); and more recently
to Extraversion and Openness to Experience (Tedeschi & Calhoun,
in press).
In what follows, we focus our attention on those personality di-
mensions that we believe merit additional or new attention in studies
of benefit-finding in adversity. We consider how dispositional opti-
mism/pessimism, cognitive and self-complexity, and dispositional
hope, each of which emphasizes the pursuit of personal goals in the
face of obstacles, may figure in this process. Then we address the role
played by major dimensions of personality captured by the Big Five
constellation (McCrae, 1992) of personality organization.

Dispositional optimism. Both Thompson (1985) and Tennen et al. (1991)

hypothesized that dispositional optimism, or the generalized expec-
tancy for positive outcomes (Scheier & Carver, 1985,1987), may expli-
cate the relation between benefit-finding and adjustment to threatening
events. Dispositional optimists do display superior adaptation to medi-
cal stressors, including coronary artery bypass surgery (Scheier et al.,
1989; Fitzgerald, Tennen, Affleck, & Pransky, 1993), childbirth (Carver
& Gaines, 1987), failed in-vitro fertilization (Litt, Tennen, Affleck,
908 Affleck and Tennen

& Klock, 1992); and HIV-positive status (Taylor et al., 1992). There
is also good reason to suspect that optimistic individuals should be
more inclined than pessimists to construe benefits from adversity: Their
hopeful view of the future may well stem from a positive interpretation
of the present.
Several studies using the Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier &
Carver, 1985) of dispositional optimism and pessimism have already
shown that perceptions closely related to benefit-finding are related to
optimistic expectations. For example, Fontaine, Mastead, and Wagner
(1993) found that among college students dispositional optimism was
associated with "positive reinterpretation" as a strategy of coping with
life stressors. Curbow, Somerfield, Baker, Wingard, and Legro (1993)
reported that among individuals undergoing bone marrow transplan-
tation, greater optimism was associated with reports of positive life
changes and personal growth; and Carver et al. (1993) found that
optimists are more likely to use "positive reframing" as a coping
strategy before and after breast cancer surgery. In a study that measured
situation-specific optimism (an expected correlate of generalized opti-
mism), Affleck et al. (1991) showed that mothers who maintained more
optimistic expectancies for their premature infant's development were
more likely to find benefits in the neonatal intensive care crisis.
Tennen et al. (1992) also examined how dispositional optimism and
benefit-finding relate to one another and figure in the day-to-day symp-
toms, mood, and functioning of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis,
a chronic and incurable disease, whose physical signs and symptoms
include severe joint pain and stiffness, fatigue, and, without surgery, ir-
reversible joint damage and immobility. After completing the LOT and
measures of perceived control over and benefits from their chronic pain
drawn from the Inventory of Perceived Control Beliefs (IPCB; Men-
dola, 1990), research participants reported each day for 75 consecutive
days their pain intensity, mood, and pain-related activity limitations
(e.g., missing work, cutting back on planned social activities). As pre-
dicted, those scoring higher on the LOT were significantly more likely
to endorse benefits from their illness, and they also reported signifi-
cantly higher levels of average positive daily mood.
Perceiving benefits from living with chronic pain also correlated with
these participants' positive daily mood. We thus wondered whether the
relation between benefit-finding and daily mood might be explained
by the tendency of dispositional optimists both to find benefits and
to experience more positive mood states. As expected, controlling for
Construing Benefits from Adversity 909

dispositional optimism did attenuate the significant relation between

benefit-finding and mood.'
Is the association between benefit-finding and emotional well-being
due entirely to differences in dispositional optimism? Enthusiasm for
this hypothesis is dampened by refinements in the LOT since Tennen
et al.'s (1992) study was published. First, there is compelling evidence
that optimism, as measured by total scores on the LOT, is not a unitary
construct. Instead, the LOT appears to measure two relatively orthogo-
nal constructs: optimism and pessimism. Moreover, investigators have
recently confirmed that optimism and pessimism may not have equiva-
lent relations with other personality and adaptational outcome mea-
sures (Marshall, Wortman, Kusulas, Hervig, & Vickers, 1992; Mroczek,
Spiro, Aldwin, Ozer, & Bosse, 1993). Thus, the analysis by Tennen
et al. (1992) may be flawed because it failed to distinguish between
optimism and pessimism as independent correlates of daily mood.
A second recent refinement of the LOT recommended by Scheier,
Carver, and Bridges (1994) is even more critical to evaluating the speci-
ficity of the relation between benefit-finding and emotions. Two of the
four items that originally claimed to measure optimism appear instead
to measure the ability to extract positive value from negative circum-
stances: "I always look on the bright side of things" and "I'm a believer
in the idea that 'every cloud has a silver lining.' " Thus any apparent
relation between optimism and benefit-finding may simply be due to
overlapping measures of benefit-finding, one dispositional (as assessed
by these two items on the LOT) and the other more specific to the
problem itself (as measured by the situation-specific benefits interview
or perceived benefits questionnaire).
We reanalyzed the data reported by Tennen et al. (1992) to sepa-
rate the effects of optimism versus pessimism on well-being and of the
expectancy versus benefit-finding components of optimism. Benefit-
finding remained significantly correlated with the original four-item
optimism scale but not with pessimism, and remained significant even
when pessimism was partialled from the association. The two-item opti-
mism scale, however, which omits the items on dispositional benefit-

1. A more complex relation between benefit-finding and daily activity limitations re-
mained independent of dispositional optimism, however. Among patients who reported
relatively little daily pain, benefit-finding was unrelated to the number of activity limi-
tation days reported in daily diaries. Among those with relatively severe pain, however,
benefit-finding predicted fewer activity limitation days. This interaction is unique in the
literature on benefit-finding, which has limited its search for relations to main effects.
910 Affleck and Tennen

finding, did not correlate significantly with finding benefits from the
illness. Most important, benefit-finding remained a significant corre-
late of daily mood when the restricted optimism score was covaried
from this relation. Thus, a more narrowly operationalized measure of
optimism did not confound the association between benefit-finding and
well-being.
In summary, published and unpublished data render equivocal the
role of dispositional optimism in benefit-finding and its association with
well-being among those facing major medical problems. Because of re-
cent and welcome refinements in the LOT, some of the findings linking
optimism and pessimism to benefit-finding should be reconsidered and
revisited in future research.

Cognitive and self-complexity. The benefits of cognitive complexity

share with dispositional optimism/pessimism the ability to achieve per-
sonal goals despite barriers imposed by aversive events. More than 30
years ago, Harvey (1965) theorized that the more complex one's con-
ceptual system, the greater one's ability should be to achieve "adequate
means of fate control... and a greater mastery over what would other-
wise be a capricious, unpredictable, and overwhelming environment"
(p. 249). The logic of this argument turns on the contention that in the
face of adversity, cognitively complex individuals should be better able
to pursue alternative goals and find more flexible ways of achieving
them. This is one way of interpreting the redefinition of threatening
experiences that occurs when people see the threat as an opportunity to
change their life goals, values, or priorities in desirable ways.
Linville's more recent elaboration of the concept of self-complexity
refines this argument (Linville, 1985, 1987). Linville documented that
individuals who display high self-complexity—reflecting a greater num-
ber of discrete roles or identities used to organize self-schemas—adapt
better to adversity, presumably because they are less likely to suf-
fer global effects on self-representation. Bringing additional specificity
to this hypothesis, Morgan and Janoff-Bulman (1994) suggested that
not all forms of complex self-representations should have equivalent
efFects on adaptation to threat. Rather, it is the complexity of posi-
tively valenced self-representations that should best predict adaptation
to events that threaten personal identities and roles. Their test of this
hypothesis revealed that psychological adjustment to lifetime traumas
(e.g., death of a parent, physical abuse, sexual assault) was superior
among those who continued to hold many more independent positive
Construing Benefits from Adversity 911

self-representations (e.g., "hard working," "focused," "imaginative,"

"motivated") than among trauma survivors with fewer independent
positive self-representations. Whether positive self-schema complexity
plays a part in the relationship between well-being and benefit-finding
per se remains unknown, however.

Dispositional hope. Dispositional hope is yet another personality con-

struct based on the perceived accessibility of desired goals. Disposi-
tional hope differs in one important way from optimism/pessimism in
that it encompasses not only one's expectancy that desired goals can be
achieved but also one's ability to imagine avenues for goal attainment
(Snyder, Irving, & Anderson, 1991).
We are uncovering evidence of the key role that dispositional hope
plays in finding benefits from living with fibromyalgia, a syndrome of
unknown origin that combines widespread pain with unusual tender-
ness in multiple tender point sites and is often accompanied by sleep
disturbance. Our study affords a test of the relative importance of dis-
positional optimism/pessimism and hope as measured by the LOT and
HOPE (Snyder, Harris et al., 1991) scales respectively, in daily coping
with fibromyalgia pain.
Our preliminary results after studying 35 participants suggest that
neither the LOT pessimism scale, nor the revised LOT optimism scale
correlate with the extent of perceived benefits from living with fibro-
myalgia (as measured by IPCB items on benefit-finding). Instead, it is
individuals with greater dispositional hope who cite more benefits from
living with their chronic pain. In particular, those scoring higher on
the HOPE scale endorsed greater agreement with the IPCB items "I
have learned a great deal about myself from living with my pain," and
"Dealing with my pain has made me a stronger person." The ability
of dispositional hope to predict benefit-finding, controlling for differ-
ences in the related constructs of optimism and pessimism, is strong
evidence of its unique role in shaping positive appraisals of adversity. In
a later section, we will summarize additional data concerning disposi-
tional hope's ability to predict how often fibromyalgia patients actually
use their conviction of benefits as a daily cognitive coping strategy for
contending with their daily pain.

The Big Five dimensions of personality. No discussion of the person-

ality underpinnings of coping with adversity would be complete with-
out mentioning the potential contribution of second-order personality
912 Affleck and Tennen

traits, as captured by the Big Five constellation of Neuroticism, Extra-

version, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness (McCrae,
1992). McCrae and Costa (1986) found that individuals low in Neu-
roticism, high in Extraversion, and high in Openness tend to rely to a
greater extent on "drawing strength from adversity" as a style of coping
with threat. These broad dimensions of personality have considerable
appeal as potential correlates of benefit-finding in adversity. They may
more efficiently account for the variance in benefit-finding shared by
more specific traits that emphasize goal attainment in the face of ob-
stacles. They may also provide a template for predicting the types of
benefits people will construe from adversity.
Specific benefits attributed to misfortune could match the charac-
teristic approaches to the self, the world, and others associated with
major dimensions of personality. For example, the typical negative self-
perceptions associated with Neuroticism/negative affectivity would
lead to the hypothesis that individuals high on this trait would be less
able to find adversity a cause of positive self-appraisals of personal
growth. Those scoring higher on measures of Extraversion, who are
more gregarious, cheerful, and seekers of social contact, might be espe-
cially likely to cite positive consequences of adversity for social rela-
tionships. The individual who is more open to experience—imaginative,
emotionally responsive, and intellectually curious—might be particu-
larly likely to meet the challenge of adversity through a philosophical
reorientation and a new direction in life plans.
To our knowledge, only a single study (Tedeschi & Calhoun, in
press) has examined the full range of personality prediction of spe-
cific benefits found in adversity. More than 600 college students who
reported recent major life stressors, such as the death of a parent, crimi-
nal victimization, or accidental injuries, completed the NEO Person-
ality Inventory measure of the five-factor model of personality (Costa
& McCrae, 1985) and the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI;
Tedeschi & Calhoun, in press), which measures characteristic forms of
positive change claimed from adversity, such as the emergence of new
possibilities, spiritual growth, and better relationships. Scores for Extra-
version, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness each corre-
lated significantly with the total posttraumatic growth score. Although
a multivariate analysis of personality predictors was not reported, it
appears that Extraversion is the most likely candidate to maintain an
independent prediction of overall benefit-finding. It correlated the high-
est with benefit-finding and was the only dimension to be associated
Construing Benefits from Adversity 913

significantly with each of the subscales of the PTGI. Extraversion, as

might be predicted, correlated most strongly with the report of im-
proved relationships. Openness to Experience was also an expectedly
strong correlate of the PTGI subscale labeled "new possibilities," which
concerns the emergence of new interests and new life paths.
The foregoing research and speculation view personality factors as
independent variables in the process of benefit-finding from aversive
life experiences. However, in view of the promise of personal trans-
formation implied by some of the benefits attributed to misfortune, a
case could be made that benefit-finding mediates a change in person-
ality among at least some of those who are contending with acute or
chronic adversities. Researchers have yet to address this question in
clinical samples, and the prospect of personality change arising from
a single experience, no matter how momentous, might be rejected by
many personality theorists. Nonetheless, a recent study by Park, Cohen,
and Murch (1996) raises the possibility of personality change after
encounters with adverse life events. College students who reported
more personal growth stemming from their most negative event dur-
ing a 6-month span displayed significant increases in both dispositional
optimism and trait positive affectivity during that time.
The findings reported in this section underline the desirability of
incorporating specific and general personality measures in future re-
search on individual differences in benefit-finding and their association
with psychosocial adjustment to adversity. Future studies would also
profit from assessing whether individuals actually use knowledge of
any benefits derived from adversity as a way of coping with their mis-
fortune. It is this key distinction between beliefs and coping strategies
to which we turn next.

Benefit-Finding versus Benefit-Reminding:

From Adaptive Conclusion to Coping Strategy
To this point, we have limited our discussion to the prospect that be-
liefs about benefits aid adjustment to major medical problems. Such
beliefs as they are typically measured in studies of benefit-finding may
be conclusions or outcomes of a search for meaning and should not be
equated with coping efforts themselves. Coping strategies, as they are
currently conceptualized and measured, refer to intentional cognitive
or behavioral attempts by the individual to manage a stressor (Carver,
Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Stone, 1995).
914 Affleck and Tennen

This consensus definition of coping excludes beliefs, however adap-

tive they might be. The perception of personal control over a stressful
event, though usually an adaptive perception (Folkman, 1984), is not a
coping strategy. The expressed belief that one is comparatively better off
than someone else, i.e., a downward comparison conclusion (AflSeck,
Tennen, Pfeiffer, & Fifield, 1988), does not imply its use as a coping
strategy to enhance self-esteem (Tennen & Affleck, in press-a). Neither
does benefit-finding itself suggest that a person uses this knowledge as
a coping strategy.
Some theoretical analyses of selective evaluation processes such as
benefit-finding hint at an effortful process of coping (e.g., Taylor et al.,
1983), and we are sure that they can be effortful, but under what cir-
cumstances? Consider an individual with a chronic pain disorder facing
an extended period of intense pain who may be trying to remind her-
self of some of the benefits she has found from living with this disease
as a way of making her pain more bearable. This effort to savor the
benefits she has construed from her illness can justifiably be called a
coping strategy. It captures the intentional, strategic quality of coping
and in this way "behaves" like other cognitive pain coping strategies
such as diverting attention or reinterpreting pain sensations (Rosenstiel
& Keefe, 1983).
Whereas only those who have already discovered benefits from their
adversity may be able to use this knowledge to comfort themselves in
difficult times, there is nothing about the admission of benefits per se
that implies that benefit-related cognitions will be used as eflbrtful
coping strategies. In our study-in-progress on fibromyalgia pain, we are
exploring this and related questions, which concern the overlapping and
unique contributions to psychological adaptation of benefit cognitions
that refer to beliefs or that function as daily coping strategies. This in-
vestigation is unique in its measurement of benefit cognitions in a daily
process design that permits within-person analysis of relations among
variables over time and the combination of idiographic and nomothetic
methods (see Tennen & Affleck, in press-b, and Larsen & Kasimatis,
1991, for detailed discussions of the benefits of this design).

Daily process findings on benefit-reminding

Our ongoing study of individuals with fibromyalgia uses a prospective
daily design that entails time-intensive self-monitoring of daily symp-
toms, experiences, behaviors, emotions, and cognitions for 30 days.
We can summarize preliminary findings from the 35 women we have
Construing Benefits from Adversity 915

studied to date; describe their effortful daily use of benefit cognitions

(benefit-reminding) and its relation with benefit-finding and person-
ality/dispositional variables; and characterize the within-person rela-
tions of these comparison processes with fluctuating levels of daily pain
and daily mood.
The time-intensive self-monitoring methodology used in this study
combines a nightly structured diary with a computer-assisted "real-
time" assessment of pain intensity and mood several times each day.
The hardware for the electronic diary is a PSION palmtop computer
programmed to deliver auditory signals to complete an on-screen
interview at randomly selected times during the mid-morning, mid-
afternoon, and mid-evening. The interview responses were time-
stamped and stored in the palmtop computer for subsequent uploading
to a desktop system. Shiffman and colleagues (e.g., Penner, Shiffman,
Paty, & Fritzche, 1994; Shiffman et al., 1994) have established the
feasibility of similar electronic diaries for self-monitoring studies and
have discussed their many advantages over traditional paper-and-pencil
methods, including superior compliance encouragement and monitor-
ing and mitigation of some systematic biases in experience sampling.
One item on the nightly questionnaire measured benefit-reminding:
Participants used a 0 (not at all) to 6 (very much) scale to describe how
much that day they had "reminded [themselves] of some of the bene-
fits that have come from living with their chronic pain." The average
daily mean for this item was .81 {SD = 1.33); the mean percentage
of days the average respondent reported any benefit-reminding was
24.8% {SD = 34.6). Eleven participants never reminded themselves
of benefits; 15 participants reported benefit-reminding on 1 to 9 days;
4 participants did so on 10 to 20 days; and 5 did so on 21 to 30 days.
Clearly, there are considerable individual differences in how frequently
these individuals actually reminded themselves of any benefits they
had construed from their illness. Some who had cited many benefits
never reminded themselves of these benefits during a month's time
span, whereas some who had cited only one or a few benefits reported
benefit-reminding on many days.

Personality correlates of benefit-reminding. As expected, individuals

wbo had scored higher on the IPCB subscale on benefit-finding reported
more days of benefit-reminding (r = .36, p < .05). Potential con-
founds such as patients' age, duration of symptoms, education, social
class, and level of pain intensity were unrelated to the frequency and in-
tensity of daily benefit-finding. Several personality measures, including
916 Affleck and Tennen

scores on the NEO Inventory Neuroticism and Extraversion scales and

the revised and original optimism scores on the LOT were unrelated to
benefit-reminding frequencies.
The personality measures that did correlate with benefit-reminding
were the LOT pessimism subscale (r = -.38, p < .05), and the
HOPE pathways subscale (r = .37, p < .05). Recall that we noted
earlier that the HOPE pathways subscale also correlated with benefit-
finding in this sample. Because the relation between benefit-finding and
benefit-reminding became nonsignificant when HOPE pathway scores
were partialled from this association, it appears that this psychological
disposition—the ability to plan alternative avenues for successful goal
attainment—may be a stable individual difference underlying benefit-
related beliefs arui the use of benefit-reminding as a daily pain coping
strategy.

Within-person analysis of benefit-reminding. The design of our study

enables within-person analysis of day-to-day differences in benefit-
reminding and other daily processes. To examine within-person re-
lations, the data were pooled across persons and days and subjected
to a least squares dummy-variable multiple regression analysis (Jac-
card & Wan, 1993; Suls, Wan, & Blanchard, 1994), which removes
between-persons variance from the data set. In testing the correlates of
benefit-reminding, the 11 participants who never reminded themselves
of benefits were excluded from these analyses because they contributed
no within-person variance to the pooled data set.
One such analysis related daily benefit-reminding to daily pain in-
tensity, measured by electronic diary entries of daily ratings of 14 areas
of the body, and to daily mood scores, measured by electronic diary
data on a 16-item mood adjective checklist capturing all octants of the
circumplex model of mood pleasantness and mood arousal (Larsen
& Diener, 1992): pleasant mood, unpleasant mood, aroused mood,
unaroused mood, pleasant-aroused mood, pleasant-unaroused mood,
unpleasant-aroused mood, and unpleasant-unaroused mood. Days char-
acterized by more benefit-reminding did not differ in pain intensity,
but were accompanied by significant differences in mood, specifi-
cally increased levels of pleasant (i.e., happy, cheerful) mood; in-
creased levels of aroused-pleasant (i.e., peppy, stimulated) mood; and
decreased levels of unaroused (passive, quiet) mood. When all eight
mood dimension scores were entered as simultaneous correlates of
benefit-reminding frequency, only a unique relation remained with
Construing Benefits from Adversity 917

pleasant mood. Thus, on days when these chronic pain sufferers made
greater efforts to remind themselves of the benefits that have come from
their illness, they were especially more likely to experience pleasurable
mood, regardless of how intense their pain was on these days.
This preliminary within-person analysis of efforts to remind oneself
of the benefits of living with chronic pain strengthens the hypothe-
sis that benefit-reminding can improve one's emotional well-being on
more difficult days. Additional data analyses from an eventually larger
data set of more than 100 patients will exploit fully the advantages
of the idiographic-nomothetic approach by examining the extent and
sources of individual differences in the impact of benefit-reminding and
other coping strategies and cognitive appraisals on daily well-being.
Interested readers can consult recent articles that provide various multi-
level data-analytic strategies for modeling individual differences due
to personality in stress-symptom and stress-mood relations across time
(Affleck, Tennen, Urrows, & Higgins, 1994; Affleck, Urrows, Tennen,
& Higgins, in press; Bolger & Schilling, 1991; Suls et al., 1994).

CONCLUSION
This review of theory and research on the significance of benefit-finding
and benefit-reminding for coping with major medical problems leaves
little doubt of the need for, and promise of, additional research in this
area. A considerable proportion of individuals facing their own or loved
ones' severe medical problems cite benefits, gains, or advantages from
their adversity, and longitudinal studies reveal that benefit-finding can
predict emotional well-being as well as more objective indicators of
health. Despite the concern that benefit-finding may be maladaptive be-
cause it signals denial of the aversive aspects of threatening experiences,
there is no hard evidence to support this view.
Most studies measure benefit-finding from structured interviews.
New general-purpose questionnaires for measuring benefit-finding in
traumatic experiences, i.e., the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory
(Tedeschi & Calhoun, in press) and the Inventory of Perceived Control
Behaviors (Tennen et al., 1992), could help improve confidence in the
reliable and valid measurement of benefit appraisals in future studies.
Future research in this area should also more carefully distinguish
between beliefs and coping strategies, as reflected in the difference
between benefit-finding and benefit-reminding. As illustrated by our
preliminary findings on coping with fibromyalgia pain, research on
918 Affleck and Termen

benefit-reminding as a coping strategy can readily exploit the many

advantages of daily process designs, including analysis at the within-
person level of change. Interested readers can consult our more thorough
case for the adoption of such time-intensive designs to study stress-
coping-outcome linkages as manifestations of personality processes
(Tennen, Suls, & Affleck, 1991).
Benefit-finding occupies a prominent place in major theories of
coping with adversity, but its connection with personality traits and
psychological dispositions has not been explicitly addressed by theo-
rists and is only beginning to be studied by investigators. We anticipate
much success from further research linking benefit-finding and adapta-
tional outcomes with individual differences in specific traits that accent
the pursuit of personal goals in the face of obstacles—notably cognitive
and self-complexity, dispositional optimism/pessimism, and disposi-
tional hope—and in the more encompassing personality dimensions of
Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience. The best re-
search, however, awaits new theorizing about individual differences in
the way victims are able to restore faith in a secure and comforting
assumptive world. Not only should we seek further insight into the way
personality influences people's attempts to reorganize basic assumptions
in the wake of adversity, but we should also investigate the possibility
of profound changes in personality emanating from people's efforts to
restructure their views of themselves, others, and the future.

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