Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Psychology; Psychology

Project Advisor 1

Justin Hulbert

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Globally, COVID-19 left students vulnerable to the mounting stress of balancing different role responsibilities all under one roof. This period of isolation negatively impacted people’s mental health: parents’ poor well being obscured their children’s needs with increased life demands, an increase of verbal aggression within these relationships were visible, and students reported higher levels of academic stress (PeConga et al., 2020; Prime et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2021; Horita et al., 2021). Because demands on parent-child relationships are high, resilience’s protective factors are at risk with low family cohesion (Rivera et al., 2008). Therefore, this proposal aims to ameliorate students’ stress, work/family conflict, and resilience through a narrative approach that hones in on a person’s ability to reframe rooted beliefs. Bard’s remote undergraduate students will be randomly placed in either a control condition, does not write an alternative narrative, or the individual condition, participants process write from their perspective, or the family condition, the family’s perspective is considered (N=156). I predict that students creating new narratives will have higher levels of resilience, lower levels of stress, and lower levels of work/family conflict. I also predict that the family condition will report lower work/family conflict than the individual condition. Every prediction was supported by mock data but the last one. Implications of these findings can lead to programming for remote students. Yet, further research is needed to understand the pathways of narratives’ influence on students' well-being.

Keywords: narrative, resilience, stress, work/family conflict

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Open Access

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