| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 心理學系 === 107 === Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is that people experience a transformation of cognitive processing and meaning construction. Life narratives help us understand individual meaning, personality construction and self-identity. Therefore, this study was to explore PTG through word analysis of life narratives. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2007) was used to analyze different types of life narratives (high point, low point & turning point). In study 1, we explored the different characteristics displayed in the different life narratives through word analysis. In Study 2, we used word analysis to explore the word-use pattern differences of different degrees of PTG when they described their life narratives, and found out whether there were differences between different types of life narratives. Life story interview was used to collect 127 breast cancer patients’ stories. Results show that (1) Different types of life narratives have different characteristics. Patients used more positive emotion words, work words, achievement words, and leisure words in high point stories, which showed the positive emotional process when describing the high point stories. The content was often about personal achievements and leisure activities. In the low point stories, more negative emotion words, health words, cognitive words were used, which showed the challenge to the individual's old assumptive world, and it produced a deeper cognitive process. In low point stories, people showed negative emotions brought by the event, and emphasized the cognitive assessment and response to the event. In the turning point stories, more religious words and health words were used. The content was often about people’s significant changes in lives, such as religious and spiritual development, cancer experience. (2) Patients with high level PTG used more first-person singular pronouns, relative words, and certain words when describing life narratives, and the LSM index scores are also higher, indicating that their narratives were complete, detailed, coherence, assertive, and the experience is more closer to self. In addition, patients with low level PTG used more negate words, especially in the low point and turning point stories, which shows that they tend to deny the impact and meaning of the events in these two types of life stories. Finally, implications and limitations of this study were discussed.
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