The GroWTH Lab

We are a group of researchers interested in social identity processes and how they affect our psychological and physical health.

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In particular, our work as part of an ongoing Advanced European Research Council (ERC) grant awarded to Prof Orla Muldoon uses the social identity approach to health to examine responses to traumatic events. This project will develop a new social paradigm for trauma research that will allow us to understand post-traumatic stress and facilitate post-traumatic resilience and growth. This new paradigm holds that changes in social identities – the sense of self we derive from being part of valued groups – are at the heart of post-traumatic outcomes. This breakthrough project will develop a synergistic model explaining how physiological, clinical, and socio-political consequences of stress and trauma result from changes in the nature, extent, and quality of social identities. Groundbreaking theory will be supported by ground-breaking methods. (1) Changes in group membership and identification, and identity resources, will be linked to objective biological measures of stress and trauma. To date emerging evidence of the health benefits of group memberships and social identities have largely been demonstrated using subjective measures, therefore this methodological advancement is both novel and important. (2) Causal effects of positive and negative change in social identities on stress and trauma outcomes will be examined using longitudinal and experimental approaches, working in both laboratory and community contexts. (3) Qualitative studies will explore whether changes in social identities are associated with post traumatic growth at the personal level as well as the novel idea that trauma can effect change and growth in social identities. (4) Finally, a large-scale survey will assess whether trauma, via enhanced social identification, can drive progressive social change. This new paradigm will transform the conceptualization of trauma from individual to social; deepen our understanding of the physiological and psychological implications of stress and trauma; and link the personal effects of stress and trauma to its wider social and political consequences.