Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074

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Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cresp

Agentic meaning-making: Free will beliefs, sense-making, and

psychological distress following collective traumas
Joseph Maffly-Kipp a,1,∗, Chase Gause a,1, Jinhyung Kim b, Matthew Vess a, Joshua A. Hicks a
a
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, United States
b
Department of Psychology, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Meaning-making is an important component in the psychological recovery from collective traumas. However,
Collective trauma not enough is known about what individual differences might facilitate meaning-oriented approaches to coping
Meaning-making and recovering from traumas. We predicted that free will beliefs, which afford people the perception of volitional
Free will beliefs
autonomy over their actions, would be an important antecedent to sense-making and meaning-focused coping.
Posttraumatic stress, coping
We tested this conceptual hypothesis in the context of two distinct collective traumas. In Study 1 (n = 342), the
comprehension facet of meaning in life (which is the facet most related to sense-making) mediated the relationship
between free will beliefs and lower psychological distress related to the COVID-19 global pandemic. In Study 2
(n = 571), meaning-focused coping, but not other coping styles, mediated the relationship between free will beliefs
and psychological recovery (i.e., lower distress over time) in a longitudinal sample collected in the aftermath
of Hurricane Harvey. We interpreted our findings as robust support for our hypothesis, the strength of which
is bolstered by the distinct settings and methodologies with which the data were collected. We conclude by
discussing our results in relation to the view that free will beliefs afford a more agentic approach to meaning-
making, which ultimately facilities more effective psychological recovery from collective trauma.

Introduction
Traumatic events that impact entire communities—such as natural
disasters, terrorist attacks, or pandemics—have the potential to under-
mine mental health on a large scale. These events, known as collec-
tive traumas, may have unique psychological and existential implica-
tions due to their impact on collective identity and symbolic sources of
meaning (Hirschberger, 2018). Indeed, previous research has demon-
strated that, while finding meaning in these events bodes well for psy-
chological recovery, continuing to search for meaning predicts worse
outcomes (Updegraff et al., 2008). Following from this, it is perhaps
unsurprising that existential factors like meaning (Maffly-Kipp et al.,
2021; Park et al., 2021) and authenticity (Maffly-Kipp et al., 2020)
are associated with better psychological recovery. However, there is a
shortage of research examining what factors might better equip peo-
ple to use coping strategies related to meaning-making (e.g., positive
reframing) to recover from a collective trauma. Based on the existen-
tial notion that people must actualize their freedom before construct-
ing meaning (Sartre, 1946; Smith and Lapansky, 2021; Yalom, 1980;
see also, Ryan and Deci, 2001), we expected that a belief in free will
might be an important antecedent in this process. Free will beliefs are
associated with greater meaning in life (Crescioni et al., 2016) and self-
efficacy (Charzyńska and Wysocka, 2014), which are both resilience
factors in the context of collective trauma (Luszczynska et al., 2009;
Updegraff et al., 2008). Further, there is reason to believe that people
rely on global existential beliefs (e.g., belief in free will) in order to
make-meaning out of stressful life events (Park, 2010), ultimately aid-
ing recovery (Park et al., 2021). Thus, we predicted that general beliefs
in free will would facilitate a more agentic orientation towards meaning-
making, which would in turn relate to more effective psychological re-
covery from a collective trauma. The purpose of this paper is to explore
this prediction in the context of two separate collective traumas: the
COVID-19 global pandemic and exposure to a Category 4 hurricane.
Collective trauma and meaning
Trauma is defined as the exposure to “actual or threatened death,
serious injury, or sexual violence” (American Psychiatric Associa-
tion, 2013, p. 271), and exposure to traumatic stimuli can cause intense
feelings of fear and helplessness in victims, as well as various long-term

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jmaffkipp@tamu.edu (J. Maffly-Kipp), gause@tamu.edu (C. Gause), jinhyung@sogang.ac.kr (J. Kim), vess@tamu.edu (M. Vess),
joshua.hicks@tamu.edu (J.A. Hicks).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2022.100074
Received 29 June 2022; Received in revised form 26 October 2022; Accepted 16 November 2022
2666-6227/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
emotional disturbances (Jones and Cureton, 2014). Traumatic experi-
ences often directly lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, and are asso-
ciated with a host of other negative physical and mental health outcomes
(Dixon et al., 2005; KauerSant’Anna et al., 2007). Given its prevalence
(see Benjet et al., 2016), trauma is generally considered a serious public
health issue (Magruder et al., 2017). As such, identifying factors that
aid recovery from trauma is vitally important.
A significant body of work has examined the existential implications
of trauma, due to its potential impact on basic beliefs and orientations
towards the self and world. For example, Janoff-Bulman (1985) sug-
gests that the experience of trauma erodes basic meaning-related as-
sumptions, namely that the world is a good/safe place and that the self
has worth within it (see also, Tolstikova et al., 2005). This may trigger
sense-making efforts and potentially a search for meaning in the event
itself, the success of which has important implications for psychological
health (Janoff-Bulman, 1992) and more global judgments of meaning
(Park, 2010). The underlying assumption of these views is that those
who search but struggle to find meaning in a traumatic event are not able
to resolve the dissonance between the trauma and their basic assump-
tions/worldviews, leading to continued psychological distress.
Indeed, people who report searching for meaning in the wake
of a trauma report worse psychological adjustment (Davis et al.,
1998), a higher likelihood of developing depression (Coleman and
Neimeyer, 2010), and greater general distress (Silver et al., 1983). Con-
versely, finding meaning in a traumatic event requires some sort of
reconciliation of previous meaning-frameworks (Park, 2010), and al-
lows people to achieve consonance in their worldviews and regain psy-
chological equanimity (Smith and Lapansky, 2021). Perhaps unsurpris-
ingly, then, finding meaning in trauma tends to be associated with better
psychological recovery (Park and Folkman, 1997; Triplett et al., 2012;
Updegraff et al., 2008). In essence, the ability to make sense of and ac-
cept a traumatic event within one’s personal framework of meaning is
a crucial step in the trauma recovery process.
Recent work has suggested that meaning-related processes might
be particularly relevant in the context of collective traumas.
These community-wide events are unique not only in that they
threaten/impact symbolic meaning on a larger scale, but also that peo-
ple are more able to rely on community and communal resources for re-
covery due to the collective nature of the crisis (Luszczynska et al., 2009;
Saul, 2014). Therefore, the utilization of collective perspectives like cul-
tural worldviews should be particularly important. Indeed, Park and col-
leagues (2021) found that coping strategies centered around meaning-
making (i.e., positive reappraisal, positive refocusing, acceptance, and
perspective-taking), in addition to social support-seeking, predicted bet-
ter psychological adjustment to the COVID-19 global pandemic. This
complements previous research suggesting that the inability to make
sense of collective traumas is associated with increased stress (Maffly-
Kipp et al., 2021; Updegraff et al., 2008). Given the importance of mean-
ing in these contexts, identifying factors and antecedents that promote
meaning-making and meaning-focused coping in the face of community-
wide traumas is important.
Basic beliefs about the world and oneself are essential for meaning-
making (Park, 2010; Schlegel et al., 2009), and thus may be important
to the role of meaning in trauma recovery. Indeed, variables reflecting
one’s orientation towards themself are important predictors of trauma
recovery. For example, perceived authenticity predicts greater recovery
from collective trauma (Maffly-Kipp et al., 2020). Further, in a review
and meta-analysis, Luszczynska and colleagues (2009) found that self-
efficacy beliefs were predictive of better health-related outcomes in the
context of collective traumas. Similarly, Benight and Bandura (2004) re-
viewed a diverse series of studies on collective traumas and concluded
that self-efficacy beliefs aid psychological recovery in part through their
ability to afford the sufferer some sense of control over the adversity.
However, considerably less research has focused on the role of beliefs
about the world (as opposed to the self) in trauma recovery. It stands to
reason that world beliefs which afford people a sense of volition/agency,
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Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074
like general beliefs in the existence of free will (see Baumeister and
Monroe, 2014), might foster a greater tendency toward positive coping
strategies. Below we discuss how free will beliefs may be linked to less
stress during collective traumas, and the role of meaning-making in this
relationship.
Free will beliefs
A belief in free will involves the perspective that people have the
autonomous ability to choose amongst various options in life, de-
spite external social and environmental factors, internal personality,
or biological factors (Kane, 2011). Those who believe in free will de-
rive many intrapersonal benefits in this outlook of the world and, as
such, trust their personal capabilities. Such individuals are more grate-
ful (Crescioni et al., 2016), more forward-looking (Seligman et al.,
2013), are more satisfied with life, experience more positive affect
(Li et al., 2016), and derive more meaning from their place in the world
(Moynihan et al., 2017). Additionally, they perceive themselves as more
efficacious (Baumeister and Brewer, 2012), autonomous (Alquist et al.,
2013), capable of growth (Feldman et al., 2016), better able to di-
rect their own decisions, and reflect more fondly on choices made
(Feldman et al., 2014). Perhaps unsurprisingly, undermining beliefs in
free will leads to greater feelings of alienation from one’s true self (Seto
and Hicks, 2016). Clearly, these beliefs are intimately connected to a
healthy and productive orientation towards both the self and the world.
How, then, might free will beliefs be specifically implicated in
meaning-making following trauma? Some theoretical work might pro-
vide clues. Existential and humanistic psychologists/philosophers, no-
tably Sartre (1946), Frankl (1959), and May (1975), all articulated the
broad view that humans must recognize themselves as agents who pos-
sess the capacity for free deliberation and choice in order to actively
create a subjective sense of meaning out of their experiences and ex-
istence. Perhaps more concretely, Yalom (1980), and more recently
Smith and Lapansky (2021), have conceptualized psychotherapy as (in
part) an effort to help individuals actualize their free will in order to
make meaning out of their suffering and trauma. In other words, an
individual who does not believe that they have conscious control over
their thoughts and actions will be less optimally positioned to manipu-
late their interpretations and beliefs surrounding a traumatic event (i.e.,
meaning-making), leading to poorer adjustment. This hypothetical indi-
vidual might be inclined to simply accept their default interpretation of
that event. A person high in free will beliefs, however, should be better
able to decide how to navigate the accommodation and adjustment of
meaning-structures that appears critical to the trauma recovery process
(Park and Folkman, 1997; Triplett et al., 2012; Updegraff et al., 2008).
Though scant, there is some empirical work that might bolster this
theoretical account. For example, Bergner and Ramon (2013) found that
free will beliefs predicted greater meaning in life. Separately, coun-
terfactual reflection (i.e., mentally redoing past events) aids meaning-
making only for people with high free will beliefs (Seto et al., 2015). This
suggests that free will beliefs are an important requisite for the types of
cognitive processing involved in meaning-making, which is consistent
with the role of global world beliefs in Park (2010) model of meaning-
making following stressful events. So, there is strong theoretical, and
some empirical, reason to suggest that beliefs about one’s own voli-
tional autonomy (i.e., free will beliefs) are an important antecedent to
the active meaning-making that allows one to effectively recover from
collective trauma. Critically, of all the coping strategies that Park and
colleagues (2021) focused on as predictors of recovery from collective
trauma, meaning-making is the only one that has clear and strong theo-
retical ties to existential world beliefs like free will. An individual with
low belief in free will might be more likely to accept their default inter-
pretation of a trauma, but there is no reason to expect that they would
rely any less on something like social support, for example, which is
thought to be instinctual (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). Thus, the agency
afforded by free will beliefs (Baumeister and Brewer, 2012) may posi-
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
tion them as a unique pre-requisite for the meaning-oriented recovery
strategies that aid recovery from collective trauma (Park, 2021).
The current research
Drawing on the above reasoning, we examined the role of free will
beliefs in meaning-oriented coping and recovery from collective trauma.
To do so, we tested our conceptual predictions in two datasets collected
during two separate traumatic events: The COVID-19 global pandemic,
and Hurricane Harvey, which impacted Houston, TX, in 2017. These
studies are thus retrospective and exploratory, which is a significant
limitation, though we approached our research questions through the
frame of replicating and extending the findings of Park and colleagues
(2021) regarding meaning-oriented coping and psychological resilience
to the pandemic. Our central aim was to explore free will beliefs as an
antecedent to meaning-making and meaning-focused coping in psycho-
logical recovery. This project addresses the apparent gap in the literature
of the role of existential worldview beliefs in trauma recovery. We based
our predictions on the rationale that free will beliefs should facilitate a
more agentic sense-making in response to stressful events, which should
facilitate meaning-oriented coping and psychological recovery. In Study
1, we used a cross-sectional dataset to test the hypothesis that free will
beliefs would predict greater comprehension (the facet of meaning most
related to sense-making), which would in turn be associated with lower
psychological distress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 2
was longitudinal, and allowed us to more directly test the prediction that
free will beliefs would predict greater meaning-focused coping, which
would, in turn, predict greater psychological recovery from a natural dis-
aster (i.e., Hurricane Harvey). While these studies are limited by their
divergent mediating variables, they ultimately allowed us to test our
conceptual hypothesis using diverse methodology in the context of two
distinct collective traumas.
Study 1
Method
Participants
We recruited 401 undergraduate students through the subject pool
at Texas A&M University, all of whom were enrolled in an introductory
psychology course and received course credit for their participation. We
excluded 59 participants who indicated their data was invalid because
they just “clicked through” the survey. Our final sample included 342
participants. A majority of participants identified as female (58.5%),
White (77.8%), and non-Hispanic (71.9%). Ages ranged from 18 to 28
(M = 19.48, SD = 1.27). A sensitivity analysis in G∗ power for a multiple
(4) predictor regression indicated that our sample size would allow us
to reliably detect an effect size of f2 = .02 or greater with 80% power
and alpha at .05 (Faul et al., 2009).
Materials and procedure
In Study 1, participants completed an online survey. The survey was
administered between March 25 and April 27, 2019, approximately 10–
40 days since the university had shut down in-person classes due to the
emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Measures
Free will. To measure free will beliefs, we administered the Belief in
Free Will Subscale of the Free Will and Scientific Determinism Ques-
tionnaire (FAD-Plus; Paulhus and Carey, 2011). Participants responded
to 7 items intended to measure general beliefs that people have agency
and control over their decisions (e.g., “People have complete control
over the decisions they make.”). These items were responded to along a
scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree; M = 5.06, SD = 1.05,
𝛼 = 0.85).
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Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074
Meaning in life. To evaluate meaning in life, participants completed the
Multidimensional Meaning in Life Scale (Costin & Vignoles, 2020). The
scale is composed of separate subscales for comprehension, purpose,
and existential mattering. Although we were primarily interested in as-
sociations between free will beliefs, comprehension, and psychological
distress, we included the purpose and mattering subscales for both ex-
ploratory purposes, as well as to demonstrate the unique role of sense-
making in coping with collective trauma. Comprehension (M = 4.97,
SD = 1.13, 𝛼 = 0.74) was composed of four items (e.g., “Looking at my
life as whole, things seem clear to me.”; “I can’t make sense of events
in my life.” (reversed). Purpose (M = 5.53, SD = 1.15, 𝛼 = 0.82) was
composed of four items (e.g., “I have a good sense of what I am trying
to accomplish in life.”; “I don’t have compelling life goals that keep me
going” (reversed). Existential mattering (M = 5.16, SD = 1.35, 𝛼 = 0.79)
was composed of four items (e.g., “Even considering how big the uni-
verse is, I can see that my life matters”; “My existence is not significant
in the grand scheme of things” (reversed). In each subscale, participants
rated their agreement with each item on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree)
to 7 (strongly agree).
Acute stress symptoms. We administered the 30-item Stanford Acute
Stress Reaction Questionnaire (Cardeña et al., 2000) to assess for acute
stress symptoms. This scale is intended to measure stress following a
traumatic event, and we modified the items to specifically refer to the
pandemic. Participants indicated the extent to which they experienced
each symptom (e.g., “I had difficulty falling or staying asleep.”; “I felt
restless.”) on a scale ranging from 1 (not experienced) to 5 (very often
experienced; (M = 2.26, SD = 1.00, 𝛼 = 0.96).
Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS) symptoms. Participants also responded to
the 17-item PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (Weathers et al., 1993),
which we adapted to capture how distressed participants were to events
related to the pandemic (e.g., “Having physical reactions [e.g., heart
pounding, trouble breathing, or sweating] when something reminded
you of the pandemic.”). Participants answered on a scale ranging from
1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely), and we averaged their responses to the
items to form a composite PTS score (M = 1.94, SD = 0.72, 𝛼 = 0.92).
Results
Preliminary analyses
First, we ran a correlational analysis of all variables of interest. As
can be seen in our supplementary materials1 , all variables were signif-
icantly correlated with each other in the expected directions. Specifi-
cally, free will beliefs were positively associated with all meaning facets,
and all of these variables negatively predicted all stress-related out-
comes.
Primary analyses
For our primary analyses, we conducted two separate mediational
analyses to assess the role of free will beliefs and sense-making, as indi-
cated by life comprehension, on psychological recovery from COVID-19;
we ran a multiple mediation model with 10,000 bootstrapping samples
(Hayes, PROCESS, 2013). Our first analysis examined whether compre-
hension uniquely mediated the relationship between free will beliefs
and acute stress due to the pandemic. As expected, comprehension was
shown to uniquely mediate the relationship between free will beliefs
and acute stress. Having a sense of purpose was also shown to uniquely
mediate this relationship. Existential mattering, however, did not pre-
dict differences in acute stress after controlling for comprehension and
purpose. Full results are shown in Fig. 1.
1
All data, materials and supplementary analyses can be found at:
https://osf.io/29wkq/?view_only=5b1070f475d34be2ac60b51a51876ade.
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
Fig. 1. Facets of meaning in life mediating the relationship between free will beliefs and acute stress.
Fig. 2. Facets of meaning in life mediating the relationship between free will beliefs and post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Our second analysis examined whether comprehension uniquely me-
diated the relationship between free will beliefs and post-traumatic
stress symptoms due to the pandemic. Again, comprehension was shown
to uniquely mediate the relationship between free will beliefs and stress.
In this analysis, neither purpose nor existential mattering predicted post-
traumatic stress symptoms after controlling for comprehension. Full re-
sults are shown in Fig. 2.
Discussion
The findings of Study 1 provided preliminary support for the idea
that free will beliefs afford agentic meaning-making through increased
sense-making, which, in turn, relates less acute and post-event psycho-
logical distress from collective trauma. For both analyses, life compre-
hension uniquely mediated the relationship between free will beliefs and
distress related to the pandemic. Purpose also mediated the relation-
ship between free will beliefs and acute, but not post-traumatic stress.
Overall, this provided preliminary support for our hypothesis, but our
interpretation was limited based on the global nature of our mediating
variables. Study 2 allowed us to seek further support for our hypothesis
with a more situationally specific mediator.
For Study 2, we assessed free will beliefs, meaning-focused coping,
and distress following a natural disaster, Hurricane Harvey (Maffly-
Kipp et al., 2020; Maffly-Kipp et al., 2021). Texas A&M University in
College Station is about 90 miles from Houston, Texas, and as such,
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Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074
many students from the university reside or have family in the areas
affected by hurricanes and floods. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey was espe-
cially catastrophic. Hurricane Harvey was a Category 4 hurricane that
was one of the costliest hurricanes to make landfall in the United States
(“Hurricane Harvey”, 2017). Indeed, soon after the hurricane, the uni-
versity president sent an email stating: “approximately 45 percent—or
more than 31,000 members of [the] student body—come from one of
the counties affected by Hurricane Harvey, many students arrived for
classes with literally just the clothes on their backs after wading through
waist-deep water in their hometowns to get here” (M. K. Young, Personal
Communication, September 8, 2017).
We administered two surveys throughout the semester to study re-
covery from this event. The resulting data allowed us to test whether
free will beliefs would predict less psychological distress over time, and
whether meaning-focused coping (Park et al., 2010; Park et al., 2021),
would mediate this relationship.
Study 2
Method
Participants
We recruited 571 undergraduate students through the subject pool
at Texas A&M University, all of whom were enrolled in an introduc-
tory psychology course and received course credit for their participa-
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
tion. Four hundred and thirty of these participants completed a second
wave of the study. We excluded 6 participants, who had scores on the
main DVs more than 4 SD from the mean, from the analyses. Our sample
was majority female (79.3%), White (80%), and non-Hispanic (79.1%).
Ages ranged from 18 to 40 (M = 18.76, SD = 1.35). A sensitivity analy-
sis in G∗ power for a multiple (5) predictor regression indicated that our
sample size would allow us to reliably detect an effect size of f2 = .02
or greater with 80% power and alpha at .05 (Faul et al., 2009).
Materials and procedure
Participants completed an online survey twice. The first survey was
one month after Hurricane Harvey (Time 1), and the second was ap-
proximately 9 weeks after the storm (Time 2). Some of our measures
were adapted to assess perceptions of the effects of Hurricane Harvey.
Measures
Free will. To measure free will beliefs, we again administered the Be-
lief in Free Will Subscale of the Free Will and Scientific Determinism
Questionnaire (FAD-Plus; Paulhus and Carey, 2011) at both time points.
Participants responded to 7 items intended to measure general beliefs
that people have agency and control over their decisions. These items
were responded to along a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly
agree; M = 5.35, SD = 1.01, 𝛼 = 0.86, for Time 1; M = 5.22, SD = 1.06,
𝛼 = 0.89, for Time 2).
Coping strategies. We administered the 28 item Brief COPE (Carver,
1997) at Time 1 and Time 2 to gauge each participant’s use of 14 com-
mon coping strategies (positive reframing, humor, self-distraction, ac-
ceptance, etc.) that may have been used in response to the disaster.
Participants responded how often over the past week they engaged in
a variety of behaviors on a 4-point Likert scale from 1 (I haven’t been
doing this at all) to 4 (I’ve been doing this a lot). Subscale scores were
taken as the average of relevant items. Following Park et al. (2021), we
created a meaning-focused coping variable by averaging the positive re-
framing and acceptance subscales (e.g., “I’ve been trying to see it in a
different light, to make it seem more positive,” “I’ve been accepting the
reality of the fact that it has happened,” M = 1.90, SD = 0.69), as well
as a problem-focused coping variable by averaging the planning and ac-
tive coping subscales (e.g., “I’ve been thinking hard about what steps to
take,” M = 1.50, SD = 0.64), a social support variable by averaging the
instrumental and emotional support coping variables (e.g., “I’ve been
getting emotional support from others,” M = 1.29, SD = 0.47), and an
avoidance coping variable by averaging the denial, substance use, vent-
ing, behavioral disengagement, self-distraction and self-blame variables
(e.g., “I’ve been saying to myself "this isn’t real," M = 1.10, SD = 0.24).
These later variables were included in the analyses, again, for both ex-
ploratory purposes, as well as to examine the unique influence of free
will beliefs on psychological distress though meaning-focused coping in
particular.
Acute stress symptoms. We again administered the 30-item Stanford
Acute Stress Reaction Questionnaire (Cardeña et al., 2000) to assess for
acute stress symptoms. We modified the items to specifically refer to
Hurricane Harvey. Participants indicated the extent to which they ex-
perienced each symptom on a scale ranging from 1 (not experienced), to
6 (very often experienced). They completed the same measure at Time
2 (M = 1.43, SD = 0.57, 𝛼 = 0.94, for Time 1; M = 1.31, SD = 0.55,
𝛼 = 0.96, for Time 2) We computed a difference score2 between Time 1
2
There is some dispute about the reliability of difference scores, with
some researchers preferring residualized change scores (e.g., Cronbach and
Furby, 1970). This is a complex topic, however, multiple researchers have sug-
gested that difference scores are indeed a preferable approach when there are
likely to be intraindividual difference in changes between Time 1 and Time 2
measurements (Castro-Schilo and Grimm, 2018; Gollwitzer et al., 2014), as is
the case with trauma recovery. That said, SEM modeling with a latent variable
5
Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074
and Time 2 stress as one of our dependent variables in our main analyses
(M = 0.12, SD = 0.57).
PTS symptoms. At both time periods, participants again responded to
the 17-item PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (Weathers et al., 1993),
adapted to capture how distressed participants were to the events re-
lated to Hurricane Harvey. Participants answered on a scale ranging
from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely), and we summed their responses to
the items to form a composite PTS score (M = 1.34, SD = 0.29, 𝛼 = .93,
for Time 1; M = 1.17, SD = 0.30, 𝛼 = 0.90, for Time 2). We again created
a difference score between Time 1 and Time 2 PTS scores as one of our
dependent variables in our main analyses (M = 0.12, SD = 5.12).
Results
Preliminary analyses
Again, we ran a correlational analysis of all variables of interest (see
supplementary materials). Notably, and in line with predictions, free
will beliefs were positively associated with meaning-focused coping, and
both of these variables were positively correlated with improvements in
psychological stress.
Primary analyses
For our primary analyses, we again conducted two separate media-
tional analyses to assess the role of free will beliefs and coping styles
on psychological recovery from COVID-19; we ran a multiple mediation
model with 10,000 bootstrapping samples (Hayes, PROCESS). Our first
analysis examined whether meaning-focused coping at Time 1 uniquely
mediated the relationship between Time 1 free will beliefs and changes
in acute stress due to the Hurricane3 . As expected, meaning-focused cop-
ing was shown to uniquely mediate the relationship between free will
beliefs and acute stress. None of the other Time 1 coping mechanisms
showed the same pattern. Full results are shown in Fig. 3.
Our second analysis examined whether meaning-focused coping at
Time 1 uniquely mediated the relationship between Time 1 free will
beliefs and changes in PTS symptoms. As expected, meaning-focused
coping was shown to uniquely mediate the relationship between free
will beliefs and post-traumatic stress. Again, none of the other coping
mechanisms showed the same pattern. Full results are shown in Fig. 4.
Discussion
The findings for Study 2 further supported our hypothesis that free
will beliefs lend themselves to agentic meaning-making. The longitudi-
nal nature of Study 2 allowed us to more clearly see how free will beliefs
not only act as an initial buffer of distress in the face of collective trauma,
but also lowered distress over time. Study 2 replicates and extends Park
and colleagues’ (2021) findings that meaning-focused coping strategies
confer resilience in the face of collective trauma and uniquely demon-
strates the importance of existential worldviews in making sense of and
coping with traumatic events.
framework is generally recommended as the most robust test of Time 1 to Time
2 change (Castro-Schilo and Grimm, 2018; Mun et al., 2009). Since the differ-
ence score approach was our original analysis plan, we present that here. How-
ever, we also present the results of residualized change analyses, which were
nonsignificant, and our SEM analyses, which were significant, in supplemental
materials.
3
We also ran these analyses switching free will beliefs and meaning-focused
coping in the model. These analyses were nonsignificant, which strengthens our
interpretation of the directionality of these relationships. These analyses can be
found in supplemental materials.
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
Fig. 3. Coping strategies mediating the relationship between free will beliefs and acute stress.
Fig. 4. Coping strategies mediating the relationship between free will beliefs and post-traumatic stress symptoms.
General discussion
Meaning-making, which depends upon basic schemas and beliefs re-
lated to the self and the world (Park, 2010), is a vital component of
psychological recovery from difficult experiences like collective trau-
mas (Updegraff et al., 2008). We predicted that free will beliefs would
be an important antecedent to meaning-making and meaning-focused
coping in the context of trauma recovery. Our results across two stud-
ies, drawn from datasets collected in the wake of two distinct collective
traumas, broadly supported this prediction. In Study 1, we explored
a cross-sectional sample collected during the height of the COVID-19
global pandemic. Our results showed that free will beliefs uniquely pre-
dicted comprehension, the facet of meaning in life most conceptually
related to sense-making, which in turn predicted lower acute stress and
post-event psychological distress. In Study 2, we analyzed a longitudi-
nal sample collected in the aftermath of a deadly 2017 natural disas-
ter in Houston, Texas: Hurricane Harvey. These analyses revealed that
6
Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074
meaning-focused coping strategies mediated the relationship between
free will beliefs and psychological recovery from the event, and were
in fact the only type of coping strategy to do so. This study confirmed
the suggestive evidence provided by Study 1 and robustly supported our
primary hypothesis in a unique longitudinal sample.
These findings affirm and extend the body of work involving the
importance of meaning-making in the context of recovery from collec-
tive traumas. Multiple studies have demonstrated that meaning-making
predicts better recovery from these events (Maffly-Kipp et al., 2021;
Park, 2021; Updegraff et al., 2008), so the discovery of factors that
might facilitate this process, like free will beliefs, is a novel contribution.
If worldview-dissonant traumas trigger accommodative efforts (Janoff-
Bulman, 1985; Schwartzberg and Janoff-Bulman, 1991), then it is per-
haps unsurprising that pre-existing beliefs about one’s ability to freely
navigate themselves throughout the world would relate to this process.
Indeed, this is consistent with Park (2010) model of meaning-making,
which suggests that the interplay between stressful experiences, situ-
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
ational meaning-making, and global beliefs/meaning is an interactive
and ongoing process by which people create and update their world-
views. While other global beliefs are likely important in this process (see
Benight and Bandura, 2004), we interpreted our results to suggest that
free will beliefs might afford people a more agentic orientation towards
their own recovery and meaning-making processes. Although our find-
ings, as well as previous research (e.g., Baumeister and Brewer, 2012;
Seto et al., 2015), support this latter notion, future work is needed to
confirm the precise mechanistic nature by which free will beliefs are
related to improved meaning-making and psychological recovery.
It is also notable that comprehension, the facet of meaning that cap-
tures the perceived coherence of one’s worldview (George and Park,
2016), was the only consistent mediator of the pathway between free
will beliefs and psychological recovery in Study 1 (though purpose
showed some evidence of this pattern). This is consistent with our pre-
dictions, and may suggest that free will beliefs are most relevant to the
ways that one makes sense of a traumatic event, rather than ways that
one finds purpose or mattering in its wake. Indeed, Park (2010) model
is most focused on sense-making as a mechanism for recovery, which
is consistent with the relatively cognitive form of meaning-making es-
poused by existentialists (e.g., Sartre, 1946; Yalom, 1980). Previous
work has also shown that comprehension is the facet of meaning most
protective against the experience of chronic pain (Boring et al., 2022),
which further validates its potential importance for psychological health
and managing stressful realities. Future work should investigate the role
of comprehension, relative to purpose and mattering, in mental health
and mental illness
Our work also holds important implications for the literature involv-
ing free will beliefs. Lay beliefs about free will are thought to function as
a basis for the volitional control that allows people to function in society
in an autonomous and adaptive way (Baumeister and Monroe, 2014).
Of course, it makes intuitive sense that this perspective might afford
a more volitional approach to one’s own recovery. However, this per-
spective also raises the possibility that the framing of our research in
the context of collective traumas specifically might be especially im-
portant. If recovery from these community-wide events indeed requires
engagement with collective systems of meaning (Hirschberger, 2018),
it stands to reason that factors facilitating collective and prosocial atti-
tudes might be uniquely relevant. Of course, some existing research is
suggestive that free will beliefs can facilitate meaning-making related
to individual events (Seto et al., 2015), but future research could at-
tempt to investigate whether our findings might differ in the context of
individual traumas. Further, this research joins a small number of stud-
ies suggesting that free will beliefs have important relationships with
mental health constructs (Borunova, 2019; Li and Wong, 2020), a topic
which is understudied. In consideration of our findings, free will and
agentic meaning-making might be important concepts to consider re-
garding the etiology of, and recovery from, experiences like depression,
anxiety, and post-traumatic stress.
Finally, our findings may carry important clinical implications.
Trauma is a major public health concern (Magruder et al., 2017),
and mental health professionals devote significant efforts towards ef-
fectively managing and treating the psychological effects of trauma
(Perrotta, 2019). Of course, the identification of any factors that pre-
dict trauma recovery can be useful to this aim, but these findings
might provide some particularly actionable insights. That meaning-
making might facilitate trauma therapy is not a novel concept (see
Steger and Park, 2012), and many existing therapies may already im-
plicitly facilitate growth in this way (e.g., insight-oriented approaches,
see Hamm et al., 2021). However, the knowledge that a belief in
personal volitional autonomy is important to meaning-related coping
could be useful for clinicians and those developing therapeutic in-
terventions. For example, a careful examination of one’s worldview
and existential beliefs, as is suggested by existential therapies (e.g.,
Yalom, 1980), might be a critical first step before the more active ap-
proaches that are often taken in trauma therapies, like narrative ex-
7
Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 3 (2022) 100074
posure therapy (Gwozdziewycz and Mehl-Madrona, 2013) or cognitive
processing therapy (see Chard et al., 2012). Future work could investi-
gate whether free will beliefs are predictive of the effectiveness of such
approaches.
This work has several important limitations. First, the mediating
variables differ between our two studies, limiting the extent to which
we can interpret our findings as evidence of the same processes. Global
judgments of meaning/comprehension (as were measured in Study 1)
are undoubtedly different from the specific utilization of meaning-
oriented coping strategies (as were measured in Study 2). Further, de-
spite Study 2 being longitudinal, the relationship between free will and
meaning was cross-sectional in both studies, limiting the extent to which
we can infer directionality from our findings. That said, Park’s (2010)
meaning-making model suggests that situational sense-making directly
interacts with global meaning in a cyclical and recursive fashion, so
there is at least theoretical reason to see valuable commonalities across
our two distinct mediating variables. Ultimately, both studies showed
that free will beliefs were an important predictor of meaning-related
processes, which in turn predicted lower distress/better recovery. This
is thus an imperfect, though still valuable, exploration of an under-
explored and difficult to study area of research. Second, our study relied
solely upon self-reported variables. Though there is often no clear way
to more effectively measure abstract psychological constructs like be-
liefs in free will or meaning, it should not be overlooked that the ways
in which people answer survey items might not perfectly relate to how
they engage with the world through a personal existential framework
(i.e., a worldview). Third, all of our participants were undergraduates
at a single university, which of course limits our ability to generalize
these findings to other populations. Finally, all analyses were retrospec-
tive and exploratory. While a commitment to open science practices like
pre-registration is vital, it is also the case that collective traumas are
unpredictable and difficult to study, therefore any opportunity to do
so should be considered valuable. Nevertheless, our findings should be
interpreted with these important caveats in mind.
Collective traumas are unique events both at the broad societal level
and at the individual psychological level. As such, responses to them
may carry important wisdom about the interplay between self and cul-
ture. In this paper, we have provided evidence that a basic belief about
the nature of this interplay, belief in free will, is an important factor in
how people cope with and recover from these community-wide traumas.
We have interpreted our findings to suggest that free will beliefs may af-
ford people a more agentic approach to meaning-making, ultimately al-
lowing for more effective recovery from the traumatic event. In a chaotic
world, such orientations might be evermore important to retain.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Ethical Approval Statement
This research was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee
(Institutional Review Board) at Texas A&M University. The research
for Study 1 was approved on 02/20/2020, with the approval number
IRB2020-0173, reference number 105701. The research for Study 2 was
approved on 09/28/2017, with the approval number IRB2017-0671,
reference number 063578.
All participants of both studies read and signed informed consent
forms.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Writ-
ing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Chase Gause: Writing – original
J. Maffly-Kipp, C. Gause, J. Kim et al.
draft, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis. Jinhyung Kim: Data
curation, Formal analysis, Visualization. Matthew Vess: Writing – re-
view & editing. Joshua A. Hicks: Writing – original draft, Writing –
review & editing, Data curation, Formal analysis.
Data availability
Our data is shared through OSF: https://osf.io/29wkq/?view_only=
5b1070f475d34be2ac60b51a51876ade.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.cresp.2022.100074.
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