Who has to tell their trauma story and how hard will it be? Influence of cultural stigma and narrative redemption on the storying of sexual violence

Abstract

Although survivors of sexual violence have shared their stories with the public on social media and mass media platforms in growing numbers, less is known about how general audiences perceive such trauma stories. These perceptions can have profound consequences for survivor mental health. In the present experimental, vignette-based studies, we anticipated that cultural stigma surrounding sexual violence and cultural preference for positive (redemptive) endings to adversity in the United States (U.S.) would shape perceptions. Four samples of U.S. adults (N = 1872) rated first-person narratives of 6 more stigmatizing (i.e., sexual violence) or less stigmatizing (e.g., natural disaster) traumatic events. Confirming pre-registered hypotheses, sexual violence trauma (versus other types of trauma) stories were perceived as more difficult to tell, and their storytellers less likeable, even when they had redemptive endings. Disconfirming other pre-registered hypotheses, redemptive (versus negative) story endings did not boost the perceived likelihood or obligation to share a sexual violence trauma story. Rather, redemptive (versus negative) story endings only boosted the perceived likelihood, obligation, and ease of telling other, less stigmatizing types of trauma stories. Findings suggest that sexual violence survivors do not benefit, to the same degree as other survivors, from telling their stories with the culturally valued narrative template of redemption. Clinical and societal implications of the less receptive climate for sexual violence stories are discussed.

Redemptive Stories and Those Who Tell Them are Preferred in the U.S.

“…Indeed, although not the focus here (see Delker et al, 2020), there are some hints that some stories may be especially hard to tell, even when they are redeemed. The stories of childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual assault were rated less positively than other stories even when they were redeemed.…”

Post‐traumatic growth as positive personality change: Challenges, opportunities, and recommendations

“…However, this master narrative has the potential to be harmful to the people whose stories deviate from it. People whose stories are not aligned with the master narrative of redemption in their culture may diverge from socially acceptable strategies to recover from trauma, which could lead to poorer adjustment (Delker, Salton, McLean, & Syed, 2020; Infurna, 2020; McLean et al, 2020). Individuals may also provide socially desirable responses to assessments of growth in order to align their experience with the master narrative (Salsman, Segerstrom, Brechting, Carlson, & Andrykowski, 2009; Zoellner & Maercker, 2006), which may also have the consequence of upholding, and further instantiating, the master narrative to which people are responding (McLean & Syed, 2015).…”

Redemptive Stories and Those Who Tell Them are Preferred in the U.S

“…For example, we had an identical story about a car accident, but created different endings for that event. We take up the issue of the role of event type in more detail elsewhere (Delker, Salton, McLean, & Syed, 2020), but here we expect the preference for redemptive stories, and their narrators, to be robust across types of trauma. Second, to determine the degree to which these preferences were robust across stories and participants we examined ratings both between-, and withinparticipants.…”