Post-ecstatic growth

These 4 domains show us how we can grow after positive experiences

You would think the field of positive psychology would have a pretty good handle on how positive life experiences, in general, lead to positive outcomes. It doesn’t.

I first heard about post-ecstatic growth when I was a summer intern at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center. Ann Marie Roepke, at the time one of Marty Seligman’s doctoral students, presented the idea at one of the Center’s lab meetings. It was one of those moments where I really felt the excitement of being at a cutting edge research center.

I thought for sure the concept of post-ecstatic growth would take off—the way post-traumatic growth became popular as an expansion of the study of post-traumatic stress. Knowing so much about the outcomes of traumatic experiences, wouldn’t positive psychology be incredibly interested in expanding our understanding to include positive experiences?

Plus, what a delicious way to refer to the good things that happen to us. Ecstatic.

But over 10 years after Roepke published her paper, very little else on post-ecstatic growth has been studied. In a meta-analysis on both post-ecstatic and post-traumatic growth, the authors conclude that quality, longitudinal research on the growth outcomes of positive life events is severely lacking (Mangelsdorf, Eid, & Luhmann, 2019). Their paper is titled: “Does growth require suffering?”

The answer is no. And even though the study of post-ecstatic growth needs a lot more development, the framework from Roepke’s original research is both intriguing and useful.

Roepke (2013) asked participants to think of “the best experience you can remember from your life” (p. 283). To be honest, many of the events people considered were not the kinds of designed experiences that are my focus here at The Afterparty. People mentioned things like falling in love, getting married, becoming a parent, graduating, or accomplishing something.

But there were other types of experiences sprinkled in too. One example was a performance of art and music, where the whole audience seemed similarly enraptured by its beauty even as they all left the venue. Apart from confirming that these kinds of meaningful collective experiences can lead to growth, it’s remarkable that some people count such events as the best in their lives.

So here they are: the four domains in which people said they grew after positive experiences, according to Roepke’s scale (the Inventory of Growth after Positive Experiences).

New meaning in life

The meaning factor consists of statements about meaning, purpose, and one’s role in life. People who experienced growth in this area might have new priorities, more maturity, or a new perspective on how they “fit into the bigger picture” (p. 284).

Roepke also treated meaning as a category of experience, not just an outcome. She based these categories on Seligman’s popular five-part theory of well-being. Known as PERMA, it identifies the building-blocks of flourishing: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

Participants in Roepke’s study were asked to pick which of these five categories best described the positive event they’d chosen. Interestingly, those who said they had a meaning-type experience were more likely to have higher scores across the entire growth inventory, compared to other experience categories.

What’s more: When events evoked particular emotions, people were more likely to have higher overall growth scores. Those emotions included awe, inspiration, and elevation—feelings we can easily connect to a sense of meaning.

Better relationships

Ok, so this isn’t surprising at all. It’s basically impossible to talk about the important things in life without talking about relationships.

But here’s what is surprising: Out of the five statements that make up the relationships factor on the growth scale, only two of them actually reference other people. Those are about understanding and getting along with people better. But the remaining three statements sound rather personal: becoming more open or easy-going, and also knowing yourself better.

It makes sense that those changes would lead to more satisfying relationships, but they also seem much broader than that. Yet according to factor analysis (a fancy statistical process which, to me, is a bit like magic), all five of these statements can be treated as a group that are related to the same central concept. And for now, we name that concept relationships.

Spiritual growth

There was a time when I would have largely dismissed this domain’s relevance to designed experiences that weren’t explicitly religious or clearly about a spiritual topic. And maybe that would still be fair for some of the statements under this factor of the growth inventory: those that reference a strengthening of “spiritual faith” and connection to “God or a higher power.”

But there is another statement here that could apply to so many experiences: “I have a better understanding of spiritual matters” (p. 284). It all depends on your interpretation. In my explorations, again and again, I find that when people speak of experiences of deep connection, there are often feelings of transcendence or sacredness in the mix.

Roepke also found that when people said they felt a “connection to something greater than the self” during their experience, they tended to have higher total scores on the growth inventory. We could easily understand that as getting at some sort of spiritual matter.

Increased self-esteem

I find the statements that fall under the self-esteem growth factor to be incredibly beautiful in their simplicity and power. I honestly don’t have much commentary for this one. Just read them, feel them. Imagine what kind of experience might make you say these things.

I like myself more.

I believe in myself more.

I have more respect for myself.

I have more faith in my dreams.

Not all positive experiences lead to growth, defined this way. And not all of the changes that people attribute to their experiences were extreme. But about 80% of people in Roepke’s study said that they did grow, at least a small amount, from their best life event. And the average total rating on the growth inventory across participants indicates a “moderate” degree of growth (Roepke, 2013).

This was one of the most important findings of her paper: that “growth is not an unusual phenomenon” (p. 285) after positive experiences. So whether we are creating experiences for others or seeking them out for ourselves, growth gives us a new lens for understanding the value they hold.

Party-starter guide: Designing with growth outcomes in mind

Designers can consider:

• The experience you’re creating might lend itself to positive changes in people’s spiritual lives, relationships, self-esteem, and/or sense of meaning. Why and how might this happen? What elements of the experience might prompt growth in that area? It might be worth expanding on those elements.

• Personal growth requires connecting the themes of your experience to participants’ personal lives. Can you create intentional space for making those connections throughout the experience, including during anticipation and synthesis?

  The synthesis phase

• Growth necessarily happens after an event. Where and how could you guide reflections on the topic of growth, or on one of the 4 domains specifically?

Afterparty talk

Have you experienced growth in any of these 4 areas after something positive happened? Were there specific things you reflected on after the event that helped you realize you had grown? Did you experience changes that don’t fall into one of these categories? How do you personally distinguish between “growth” and “transformation”?

Party on

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References

Mangelsdorf, J., Eid, M., & Luhmann, M. (2019). Does growth require suffering? A systematic review and meta-analysis on genuine posttraumatic and postecstatic growth. Psychological Bulletin, 145(3), 302-338.

Roepke, A. (2013). Gains without pains? Growth after positive events. Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(4), 280-291.