Comparison of personality characteristics and autobiographical memory among individuals with Post-traumatic Growth and those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder

Stress is an integral part of human life today, so most people have learned relatively adaptive ways to deal with it, these methods are usually enough to cope with the stresses of everyday life, but sometimes there are events that cause too much stress to cope with. This study aimed to evaluate the comparison of personality characteristics and autobiographical memory among individuals with Post-traumatic Growth and those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Method of this study is causal-comparative. The study population included all of the patients who refer to hospitals of Isfahan after having a vehicle accident. For the screening phase post-traumatic stress disorder inventory (PTGI) and PTSD checklist (PCL) were used. 22 persons for the PTSD group and 20 persons for the PCL group were selected purposively. Both these groups answered the Autobiographical memory test (AMT) and the short form of the Five-factor model. The analysis illustrates there are meaningful differences between these PTSD and PTG groups in neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness subscales in addition to Autobiographical memory, but there were no meaningful differences between these two groups in agreeableness.