Varma Mohith M, Hu Xiaoqing
Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; The State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; HKU-Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation, Shenzhen, China.
Behav Res Ther. 2022 Jan;148:103998. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2021.103998. Epub 2021 Nov 16.
Following trauma exposure, people often experience involuntary intrusions of traumatic memories, i.e., flashbacks. How to reduce such unwanted intrusions attracts attention from basic and translational memory research, with a goal to safeguard mental well-being and promote resilience. Here, based on prosocial behaviour's well-documented psychological benefits, we hypothesized that post-trauma prosocial behaviour would causally reduce trauma-related symptoms, including involuntary intrusions. To test this novel hypothesis, we conducted two pre-registered lab studies (N = 180) using trauma films to induce lab-analogue trauma exposure. Following trauma exposure, participants were randomly assigned to prosocial or non-prosocial conditions. Specifically, in the prosocial condition, participants donated money to their preferred charities. In the non-prosocial conditions, participants completed either a neutral, number judgement task (Experiment 1) or a proself task (Experiment 2). Participants completed a 1-week intrusion diary and Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), to assess frequencies of traumatic intrusions and post-trauma stress disorder symptoms, respectively. Results showed that compared to non-prosocial behaviour, prosocial engagement (i.e. performing charitable donations) reduced involuntary traumatic intrusions in both lab settings and in their daily life as evidenced by 1-week intrusion diaries. While exploratory mediation analyses suggested that intrusion reduction was partly driven by enhanced positive affect afforded by prosocial behaviour, future studies are required to illuminate the underlying mechanisms. To the extent that post-trauma prosociality alleviated trauma-related symptoms, future research is warranted to investigate how various forms of prosocial behaviour in naturalistic setting could promote resilience following trauma exposure.
经历创伤事件后，人们常常会不由自主地受到创伤记忆的侵扰，即闪回。如何减少这种不良侵扰吸引了基础记忆研究和转化记忆研究的关注，目标是保障心理健康并提升心理复原力。在此，基于亲社会行为已被充分证明的心理益处，我们假设创伤后亲社会行为会因果性地减轻创伤相关症状，包括不由自主的侵扰。为了验证这一新颖假设，我们进行了两项预先注册的实验室研究（N = 180），使用创伤影片诱发实验室模拟的创伤暴露。在创伤暴露后，参与者被随机分配到亲社会或非亲社会条件组。具体而言，在亲社会条件组中，参与者向他们喜欢的慈善机构捐款。在非亲社会条件组中，参与者完成一项中性的数字判断任务（实验1）或一项利己任务（实验2）。参与者完成了一份为期1周的侵扰日记和事件影响量表修订版（IES-R），分别用于评估创伤侵扰的频率和创伤后应激障碍症状。结果显示，与非亲社会行为相比，亲社会行为（即进行慈善捐赠）在实验室环境和日常生活中都减少了不由自主的创伤侵扰，这一点由为期1周的侵扰日记所证明。虽然探索性中介分析表明侵扰减少部分是由亲社会行为带来的积极情绪增强所驱动，但仍需要未来的研究来阐明其潜在机制。鉴于创伤后亲社会行为减轻了创伤相关症状，未来有必要进行研究，以探究在自然环境中各种形式的亲社会行为如何能够促进创伤暴露后的心理复原力。
