Goal pursuing styles and the emergence of post-traumatic growth: A longitudinal study with Hong Kong young adults under the ‘double hit’ of social movement and COVID

Abstract

Social movements and pandemics often result in mass suffering but are also opportunities for growth and advancement in modern history. Between 2019 and 2020, Hong Kong has experienced the combination of both – the intense Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill social movement and the COVID pandemic, leading to a public mental health crisis. This study investigated how post-traumatic growth (PTG) may emerge in a group of Hong Kong young adults (aged 18 to 35) coping with such ‘double-hit’ using a longitudinal dataset collected at three time-points – September 2021, November 2021, and January 2022 (i.e., 20th, 22nd and 24th after the first COVID case and abeyance of mass protests). We examined the role of two goal pursuing styles – tenacious goal pursuit (TGP) and flexible goal adjustment (FGA) on the constructive cognitive processing that underlies PTG. Our results show that greater perceived impact from the social movement and COVID resulted in more reflective rumination only when there has been a high level of FGA. In turn, higher reflective rumination predicted more PTG. However, a similar moderated mediation mechanism was not found with TGP. Our findings highlight the combinatorial effects of FGA and perceived impact on constructive cognitive processing, and therefore PTG, and point to the adaptiveness of flexibility and adaptive goal adjustment in coping with traumatic or highly stressful collective events.