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.

Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sample of 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29 paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted, lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effects were not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buy lottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lottery salient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minor pleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness. Is Happiness Relative? The idea that happiness is relative is at least as old as the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers of ancient Greece. It is also a solution to a number of intriguing puzzles in modern social science. American soldiers in World War II with a high school education or better had greater chances of being promoted but were less happy with their promo-We wish to thank the following students who provided valuable assistance in collecting data for the first study:

Two types of self-blame--behavioral and characterological--are distinguished. Behavioral self-blame is control related, involves attributions to a modifiable source (one's behavior), and is associated with a belief in the future avoidability of a negative outcome. Characterological self-blame is esteem related, involves attributions to a relatively nonmodifiable source (one's character), and is associated with a belief in personal deservingness for past negative outcomes. Two studies are reported that bear on this self-blame distinction. In the first study, it was found that depressed female college students engaged in more characterologial self-blame than nondepressed female college students, whereas behavioral self-blame did not differ between the two groups; the depressed population was also characterized by greater attributions to chance and decreased beliefs in personal control. Characterological self-blame is proposed as a possible solution to the "paradox in depression." In a second study, rape crisis centers were surveyed. Behavioral self-blame, and not characterological self-blame, emerged as the most common response of rape victims to their victimization, suggesting the victim's desire to maintain a belief in control, particularly the belief in the future avoidability of rape. Implications of this self-blame distinction and potential directions for future research are discussed.

Although specific victimizations may differ, there appear to be common psychological responses across a wide variety of victims. It is proposed that victims' psychological distress is largely due to the shattering of basic assumptions held about themselves and their world. Three assumptions that change as a result of victimization are: 1) the belief in personal invulnerability; 2) the perception of the world as meaningful; and 3) the view of the self as positive. Coping with victimization is presented as a process that involves rebuilding one's assumptive world. Introductions to the papers that follow in this issue are incorporated into a discussion of specific coping strategies adopted by victims.

This chapter discusses coping processes in the context of traumatic life events that discredit previously held assumptions. It outlines fundamental assumptions, the ways by which traumatic experiences can shatter assumptions, coping processes to rebuild assumptions (automatic processes, and motivated cognitive strategies), and the legacy of tempered disillusionment and appreciation that traumatic experiences can cause.