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Social Cognition, Vol. 7, No 2, 1989, pp 113-136
ASSUMPTIVE WORLDS AND THE STRESS OF TRAUMATIC EVENTS: APPLICATIONS OF
THE SCHEMA CONSTRUCT
RONNIE JANOFF-BULMAN University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Work on the psychological aftermath of traumatic events suggests that people ordinarily operate on the basis of unchallenged, unquestioned assumptions about themselves and the world. A heuristic model specifying the content of people's assumptive worlds is proposed. The schema construct in social cognition is used
to explore the role of these basic assumptions following traumatic events. A major coping task confronting victims is a cognitive one, that of assimilating their experience and/or changing their basic schemas about themselves and their world. Various
seemingly inappropriate coping strategies, including self-blame, denial, and intrusive,
recurrent thoughts, are discussed from the perspective of facilitating the victim's
cognitive coping task. A scale for measuring basic assumptions is presented, as
is a study comparing the assumptive worlds of people who did or did not experience particular traumatic events in the past. Results showed that assumptions about the benevolence of the impersonal world, chance, and self-worth differed across
the two populations. Findings suggest that people's assumptive worlds are affected
by traumatic events, and the impact on basic assumptions is still apparent years after the negative event. Further research directions suggested by work on schemas
are briefly discussed.
Increasingly, psychologists have begun to recognize the tremendous
psychological toll exacted by extreme events such as criminal victim
ization, disease, accidents, and natural disasters. Following such stressful life events, individuals commonly experience intense anxiety, confusion, helplessness, and depression; in some cases the symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder are apparent (e.g., Horowitz, 1982; Janoff-Bulman & Frieze, 1983). One way of understanding the psy
chological reactions of individuals who have experienced extreme
Reprint requests to Dr. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Department of Psychology, University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003.
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114 JANOFF-BULMAN
negative events is to focus on people's basic assumptions about the
world and the impact of stressful life events
on these assumptions (Janoff-Bulman, 1985; Janoff-Bulman & Frieze, 1983). Work with victims
suggests that people generally operate on the basis of important as
sumptions that generally go unquestioned and unchallenged. Stressful
life events, which may dramatically challenge these assumptions, thereby serve to illustrate the otherwise tacit
implicit nature of
Past...