Finding Connection Through Adversity: A Discussion on Trauma and Acute Stress With Dr. Anthony Mancini

Adam Goldstein

Traditionally, trauma has been associated with a host of negative outcomes, such as persistent fatigue, sleep disorders, emotional dysregulation, and cognitive distortions (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment U.S., 2014). Yet, in recent years, researchers exploring psychological trauma have begun to highlight some of the adaptive outcomes resulting from a traumatic experience, such as the development of psychological resilience (Atkinson et al., 2009), increased empathy (Greenberg et al., 2018), and posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2009). For the past 17 years, Clinical Psychologist Dr. Anthony Mancini, a researcher and professor at Pace University, has been investigating the adaptive functions psychological distress can have, namely how trauma and acute stress can foster social interaction. In other words, Dr. Mancini argues that under certain circumstances, the psychological stress and trauma experienced during adverse events can be a driving force in promoting social connection, leading to increased resiliency and psychosocial gains (Mancini, 2019). To better understand the nuances of trauma and stress responses, Dr. Mancini was interviewed about his recent research.

What made you start studying stress/trauma responses?

It was primarily George Bonanno, who was a professor in the Columbia PhD program. He did, at the time, very contrarian and skeptical research that challenged the assumptions about how people respond to trauma and loss. He was really a pioneer in that, and so I learned a lot from him, and thus I became interested in research. Eventually, he took me on and, actually, I was his first doctoral student – he took me on as a post-doc in his lab. I didn’t feel inherently pulled toward that [trauma and loss], but he made it really interesting. His work excited my interest and that was primarily what pushed me in that direction.

What is your favorite aspect of your research? What excites you about it?

So, I started by looking at the range of responses to trauma, that’s the work I did with George. And you end up with what he describes as prototypical patterns: most people are resilient, of course, they do fine, even through terrible events. Some struggle and get better. Some don’t get better, and they struggle with chronic distress. So I was interested in those patterns.

In the process of my research, I did a study on the Virginia Tech campus shootings, and we found a pattern of people who improved from before to after the shootings. About 10-15% of the sample showed a dramatic reduction in depression and anxiety. So that was very counterintuitive, and it turns out it was linked with the social environment. They clearly developed new social resources as a result of the event, and this benefited, presumably, their psychological functioning. So I wanted to understand that better, and I was very much interested in the way that we react to stress, worry, tragedy, and disaster, in seeking out other people. I think that is a natural human tendency, and I think it has beneficial effects.

It tells us something important about human beings, and so that’s part of my interest. It touches on deeper questions about being human – our relationships with others, removing some of the noise and distraction and seeing to what ultimately matters. So that’s part of my curiosity in this kind of response, which I describe as “psychosocial gains from adversity.” It’s interesting that we assume stress will harm us, but it can have these paradoxical benefits.

And it works particularly at a group level, where people are now more willing to interact with each other. There’s kind of a shared sense of experience that they can use to relate to one another, perhaps to overcome barriers that may have existed before. I think it demonstrates some of the adaptive consequences of acute stressors.

How do you hope the work that you’re doing will impact the fields of psychology, mental health, counseling, etc? What do you hope, if someone were to read some of your work, to take from it and understand if they were going to put it into their own research or clinical practices?

I would say a more complex and nuanced understanding of the impact of trauma and acute stress – one that takes into account these surprising beneficial effects on social behavior and that considers the ways that stress has beneficial effects on people. There is an assumption about trauma, which is a very loaded word, that it dominates our lives, that it has all these subtle and not-so-subtle manifestations and that it’s a primary force in our psychological health, and I have very serious questions about if that’s true. So I think that viewing trauma in the round or in a more complex way, so that it’s understood to be a basic part of human experience that virtually everyone is going to go through in one way or another and that it doesn’t inherently scar us. So just to see it in a richer way, which again, is not to dispute that it can have serious negative consequences, it’s just to think of it in a slightly more complicated way.

As a final question, do you have any next steps for where you’re looking to go with your research?

I’m continuing to explore the circumstances that encourage people to interact under stress, and the nature of the stressor that can stimulate social behavior and the kinds of stressors that don’t. It’s obvious that stress takes a variety of forms, and I think some tend to impel us towards others, others don’t. It’s certainly not my belief that stress is always good; we want some of it but we don’t want too much. So trying to better understand that link is important, and I’m actively trying to look at what the qualities and dimensions of stress are. Is it uncertainty? Is it stress in relation to other people? There’s a bunch of dimensions you can look at that might help to illuminate that link.

I’m also curious about the environment that people are in. Are there environments that tend to encourage that kind of behavior? I suspect there are. So I am interested in things that happen outside of people, that happen outside of their thoughts and preoccupations - things that aren’t strictly speaking psychological variables, but that exist in the world itself - and does that affect your propensity to interact with other people. How does that play a role in your own well-being or psychological functioning?

Conclusion

Dr. Mancini highlights the necessity of a more comprehensive understanding of trauma and acute stress’s impacts on psychological functioning. Rather than attributing a solely negative connotation to words like “trauma” and “stress,” he argues that adverse experiences should be viewed as expected parts of the human experience that can surely be detrimental, but may also be beneficial. For instance, a significant subset of trauma survivors develop an enhanced sense of resilience (Neuner, 2023), suggesting that under certain conditions, trauma and acute stress might result in adaptive outcomes for some individuals. Dr. Mancini’s research on the complexity of trauma does not delegitimize survivors’ experiences; rather, it suggests that, along with the negative outcomes, trauma and acute stress may result in psychological growth and the development of greater resilience. While the complexities of how trauma and acute stress impact psychological functioning remain, Dr. Mancini has been making great strides toward closing that gap. His innovative research challenges popular beliefs about these constructs and serves as a reminder that, especially in psychology, almost nothing is as one-sided as it might appear.

Atkinson, P. A., Martin, C. R., & Rankin, J. (2009). Resilience revisited. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 16(2), 137–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.13652850.2008.01341.x

Center for Substance Abuse Treatment U.S. (2014). Traumainformed care in behavioral health services. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US).

Greenberg, D. M., Baron-Cohen, S., Rosenberg, N., Fonagy, P., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2018). Elevated empathy in adults following childhood trauma. PloS One, 13(10), e0203886. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203886

Mancini, A. D. (2019). When acute adversity improves psychological health: A social-contextual framework. Psychological Review, 126(4), 486–505. https://doi. org/10.1037/rev0000144

Neuner, F. (2023). Physical and social trauma: Towards an integrative transdiagnostic perspective on psychological trauma that involves threats to status and belonging. Clinical Psychology Review, 99(102219), 1–16. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cpr.2022.102219

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Target Article: “Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence.” Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01