title: The push and pull of grief: Approach and avoidance in bereavement.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Prolonged Grief (PG) is recognized as a post-bereavement syndrome that is associated with significant impairment. Although approach and avoidance tendencies have both been hypothesized to play key roles in maintaining PG symptoms, understanding of these relationships has been limited by a reliance on self-report methodology. This study applies an experimental paradigm to simultaneously investigate the relationship between PG severity and approach-avoidance behavioral tendencies.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifty-five bereaved individuals with and without PG completed a behavioral measure of approach and avoidance responding in which they pulled or pushed a joystick in response to grief-related, positive, negative and neutral images that appeared on a computer screen. Concurrent visual feedback created the illusion that the images were either approaching or receding from the participant. Half of the participants also received a prime designed to activate their grief prior to the task.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Irrespective of prime condition, PG participants pulled grief-related images more quickly than they pushed them. This difference was not observed in response to non-grief related images. Non PG participants showed no difference in their reaction times to grief-stimuli.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study was undertaken in a nonclinical setting and the majority of participants had lost a loved one due to chronic illness. Future research with treatment-seeking populations and sudden loss will be needed to explore the generalizability of the findings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings from this study provide preliminary evidence supporting models of PG that integrate approach and avoidance tendencies.
authors: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia. Electronic address: fmaccallum@unsw.edu.au.
authors: Fiona
authors: F
authors: Maccallum
authors: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia.
authors: Simon
authors: S
authors: Sawday
authors: Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
authors: Mike
authors: M
authors: Rinck
authors: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia.
authors: Richard A
authors: RA
authors: Bryant
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001601:Bereavement; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Avoidance; Behavior; Bereavement; Grief; Motivation