Tribal
member's psychological research of Potawatomi presented at national
conference
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Bethany
Bruno
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As a child welfare specialist, Bethany Bruno makes tough decisions
every day about the lives and futures of children in Oklahoma foster
care. She focuses specifically on permanency planning for children
at the Department of Human Services Pontotoc County Office in Ada.
She has a Bachelor of Arts from Southeastern Oklahoma State
University in Durant, where she double majored in psychology and
sociology. Bruno's passion for studying how people behave and function
in groups led to her work towards a master's degree in clinical
mental health counseling, as well as her desire to conduct research
that hits close to home.
"I am studying research about Native American resilience and
humor styles, particularly in the Citizen Potawatomi Nation population,"
she said.
Trauma and comedy
Bruno uses the Scale of Protective Factors, or SPF, which measures
people's ability to deal with trauma. The SPF-24 model uses 24 items
to assess subjects' resilience. Bruno's research scaled it back
to 12 to make a rather lengthy survey more manageable.
"Different levels of trauma can affect people in different ways,"
she said. "You can have one person suffer what we might consider
a more minor trauma, and one person suffer more severe trauma, yet
the one who suffered the more minor trauma might be less resilient."
The scale allows Bruno to measure an individual's resiliency
factor regardless of the intensity or kind of trauma experienced.
A large part of the SPF measures goal efficacy, or the ability
to make a goal and see it through. It also measures behavior associated
with planning and prioritizing, social support networks and social
skills.
"I'm studying to see how humor plays into resiliency," she said.
"You have your four humor styles, and then you have your four resilience
factors that are looked at in my particular research."
Bruno chose to focus on two sets of humor styles: adaptive and
mal-adaptive.
Within adaptive humor, there are two subsets.
"If you have a more affiliative humor style, or if you have
a more self-enhancing humor style, then you're more likely to be
resilient," she said.
An adaptive humor style is indicative of an ability to accept
your surroundings and adjust to stressors.
There are also aggressive and self-defeating types of mal-adaptive
humor, which do not show a correlation with resilience.
"Aggressive (humor includes) putting other people down to make
yourself or the group laugh," she said. "Self-defeating (is) putting
yourself down, and that can certainly isolate people."
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Bethany
Bruno and her professor Amy Madewell attend the May Association
for Psychological Science Annual Convention in Boston, where
Bruno presented her research to a national audience. Photo
provided
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Pluralistic positivity
Certain types of humor are more common throughout any particular
culture and are largely dependent on whether it is individualistic
or collectivistic. Members of collectivistic cultures heavily consider
the group ahead of themselves, and Native Americans mostly fall
into this category.
"That can go back to actually being more self-enhancing and
more affiliative," she said. "You're wanting to uplift the group
rather than yourself."
In her research, Bruno found that Native American humor styles,
and Potawatomi humor styles specifically, follow that trend.
Bruno collected a majority of her research during the 2016 Citizen
Potawatomi Nation Family Reunion Festival in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
All of the data was volunteered and self-reported by participants
who filled out fairly lengthy surveys. After completing them, Bruno
revealed their humor styles, which she said was what most people
were interested in.
Data showed tribal members scored higher overall in adaptive
humor styles, planning and prioritizing behaviors, efficacy and
social skills.
"What was interesting though is they scored very low in social
support," Bruno said. "My best-educated guess would be because as
we have started as a tribe and as a people to come back to our roots
and to identify with who we are as Native people, there are still
aspects missing from forced assimilation and traumas that we've
experienced in our families throughout generations."
National attention
She presented her findings to industry professionals during
the May Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention,
including in front of attendees from Harvard and Yale universities.
"They haven't seen any Potawatomi research," Bruno said. "Native
American research in itself is very rare, especially in psychology.
That is something that a lot of researchers, particularly in Oklahoma,
are trying to increase.
"(It) was just really well-received they wanted to know
more."
Bruno said the data is useful in practice, including counseling.
"If this research is available to (a patient's) counselor, then
they can identify their humor style and see if that will actually
help them and their resiliency" following a traumatic event, she
said.
As a member of the Bruno Potawatomi family, she has experienced
this kind of humor firsthand.
"My Native American family members are very humorous," she said.
"It just depends on who it is, but some have a very dry sense of
humor, and some are just very different."
She also collected data at this year's Family Reunion Festival
and hopes to continue collecting data until she obtains enough to
"prove over years how resilient the Potawatomi population is, because
I know they are. But I have to prove it still."
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