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Objective: During the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented collective stressors disrupted assumptions of safety and security. Cognitive strategies like finding benefits during adversity may facilitate coping during such times of social disruption by reducing distress or motivating health protective behaviors. Methods: We explored relationships between benefit finding, collective- and individual-level adversity exposure, psychological distress, and health protective behaviors using four waves of data collected during the COVID-19 era from a longitudinal sample from the NORC AmeriSpeak panel, a representative, probability-based online panel of U.S. residents: Wave 1 (N=6,514, 3/18/2020-4/18/2020, 58.5% completion rate); Wave 2 (N=5,661, 9/24/2020-10/16/2020, 87.1% completion rate); Wave 3 (N=4,881, 11/8/2021-11/24/2021, 75.3% completion rate); and Wave 4 (N=4,859, 5/19/2022-6/16/2022, 75.1% completion rate). Results: Benefit finding was common; k-means clustering (an exploratory, data-driven approach) yielded five trajectories: Always High (15.92%), Always Low (18.13%), Always Middle (29.81%), Increasing (16.84%) and Decreasing (19.30%). Benefit finding trajectories were generally not strong correlates of emotional exhaustion, traumatic stress symptoms, global distress, and functional impairment over time. Rather, benefit finding robustly correlated with health protective behaviors relevant to COVID-19 and another viral threat (the seasonal flu): adjusting for demographics, pre-pandemic mental health, and collective- and individual-level adversity, benefit finding was positively associated with more social distancing (β=0.28, p<.001) and mask wearing (β=.21, p<.001) at Wave 2 and greater COVID-19 (OR=1.37, p<.001) and flu (OR=1.18, p<.001) vaccination at Wave 3. Conclusions: Although benefit finding was not generally associated with lower psychological distress during a collective stressor, it correlated with engagement in stressor-related health protective behaviors. Public significance statement: Finding benefits or “silver linings” during collective stress may not be associated with reduced psychological distress. However, finding benefits may promote cognitive coping strategies that encourage health protective behaviors.