Grief and the Search for Meaning: Exploring the Assumptive Worlds of Bereaved College Students

Abstract

Researchers have recently begun to challenge long-standing views of grief and have called for new approaches to help understand the phenomenon. In this vein, the present study examined the impact of bereavement on people's basic assumptions about themselves and their world. Three categories of assumptions were explored: Benevolence of the World, Meaningfulness of the World, and Self-Worth. Twenty-one undergraduates who had recently lost a parent and 21 matched controls were compared on a series of objective measures; in addition, the bereaved sample also participated in lengthy semistructured clinical interviews. Assumptions about meaning emerged as an important variable, both in distinguishing between the bereaved and control samples and also in accounting for differences in the grief responses of the bereaved. Compared with matched controls, the bereaved subjects were significantly less likely to believe in a meaningful world. Further, within the bereaved sample, the greater the subjects' ability to find meaning (i.e., make sense of the loss), the less intense their grief. Clinical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.