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Grief

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Sorrow (due to someone’s death)

Definitions

Grief:

the emotional experience of the psychological, behavioral, social, and physical reactions that the bereaved person may experience as a result of the death of a loved one.

Introduction

Grief is frequently described as a normal reaction to bereavement, which in turn is considered a normal part of life, an event which sooner or later affects most people. Grief reactions are diverse, varying across time and between people(s). There are, for example, personality and other individual differences. Nevertheless, certain regularities characterize bereavement-related phenomena. First, it is important to note that most people adjust over the course of time to the loss of a loved person (most are “resilient,” see below). Yet the experience is often typified as harrowing, as associated with suffering; the person is described as “grief stricken” or “grieving.” There are similarities too between people (at least within Western cultures) in...

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Correspondence to Margaret Stroebe .

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Stroebe, M., Boerner, K., Schut, H. (2020). Grief. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_520

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