Bereaved Adults' Evaluations of Grief Management Messages: Effects of Message Person Centeredness, Recipient Individual Differences, and Contextual Factors

Abstract

This study identifies grief management strategies that bereaved adults evaluate as more and less helpful, assesses whether the person centeredness of these strategies explains their helpfulness, and determines whether strategy helpfulness varies as a function of demographic, personality, and situational factors. Participants (105 bereaved young adults) assessed the helpfulness of 16 grief management strategies; these strategies were coded for their degree of person centeredness. Strategy person centeredness was strongly correlated with helpfulness. Strategy helpfulness varied as a function of participant gender and the disruptiveness of the decedent's death, but not as a function of need for cognition or decedent closeness.