Does personal growth initiative (PGI)-the tendency to be proactive about one's personal development-impact adaptive beliefs about life quality among survivors of mass violence, such as ethnopolitical warfare or genocidal violence? One-hundred-and-twenty-three survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and 179 Tamil individuals affected by the civil war in Sri Lanka completed assessments of PGI, satisfaction with one's past life, current life satisfaction, and anticipated future life satisfaction. High levels of PGI were associated with an adaptive inclining trajectory of life satisfaction (Past < Present < Future) in both samples. These results indicate that PGI is associated with adaptive beliefs about one's identity and well-being among war-affected populations, and supports future interventions targeting PGI among those communities.
Keywords: genocide; life satisfaction; personal growth initiative; temporal life satisfaction; trauma; war; war-affected populations.
© 2022 The Authors. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association of Applied Psychology.