ABSTRACT

Common-sense theories of the traumatic processes may be important contributors to the ethiopathogenetic mechanisms of traumatic reactions and treatment compliance. Role-playing is an important procedure by which we can get access to the explicit and implicit common-sense theories of trauma. In order to understand the implicit and the explicit theories lay-people have about trauma and how these theories might be affected by some cultural and contextual factors (i.e. rural vs. urban environment) four groups of people were assessed following the trauma processes identified by appraisal theories (i.e. appraisal, distress and coping mechanisms). 120 participants were distributed in four groups: (1) rural people - control group; (2) urban people - trauma role playing group; (3) rural people - trauma role playing; (4) urban people - control group. The obtained results are integrated in the context of current trauma theories, best expressed by Lazarus' Appraisal Theory, and their theoretical and practical implications are discussed. According to the results obtained, we could conclude that the common sense theories of trauma are similar to the scientific theories of trauma only in the case of the urban population

KEYWORDS: trauma, lay-theories, scientific theories, culture, role-playing