No abstract

Emotion regulation difficulties following trauma exposure have received increasing attention among researchers and clinicians. Previous work highlights the role of emotion regulation difficulties in multiple forms of psychological distress and identifies emotion regulation capacities as especially compromised among survivors of betrayal trauma: physical, sexual, or emotional maltreatment perpetrated by someone to whom the victim is close, such as a parent or partner. It is unknown, however, whether links between emotion regulation difficulties and psychological symptoms differ following exposure to betrayal trauma as compared with other trauma types. In the present study, 593 male and female university undergraduates completed the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), the Brief Betrayal Trauma Scale (Goldberg & Freyd, 2006), the Impact of Event Scale (Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979), and the Trauma Symptom Checklist (Elliott & Briere, 1992). A path analytic model demonstrated that betrayal trauma indirectly impacted symptoms of intrusion (β = .11), avoidance (β = .13), depression (β = .17), and anxiety (β = .14) via emotion regulation difficulties, an effect consistent with mediation. Emotion regulation difficulties did not mediate the relationship between other trauma exposure and psychological symptoms. Results may inform treatment-matching efforts, and suggest that emotion regulation difficulties may constitute a key therapeutic target following betrayal trauma.

No abstract

Levels of awareness for trauma and their consequences for research, treatment, and prevention within professional psychology and society are considered. When people must endure chronically traumatic environments, it may be adaptive to isolate from awareness information that would produce cognitive dissonance and threaten necessary relationships. Unawareness may also facilitate functioning in environments that invalidate the prevalence and impact of trauma. In addition, characteristics of the posttraumatic environment can promote or impede individuals' awareness of trauma and their psychological functioning. Though often initially adaptive, unawareness for trauma is linked to intergenerational transmission of trauma and its effects and may preclude public and professional attention to trauma treatment and prevention. Understanding the processes through which individuals become unaware or aware of traumatic experience is therefore essential to conducting effective psychotherapy with trauma survivors.

Objective We examine how naïve raters’ perception of first name socioeconomic status (SES) is related to the name's perceived race. Methods Student volunteers rate the perceived race and SES of first names. We use a logit model to analyze the data. Results Participants are four times as likely to say a “White” name is Black when they perceive the mother as uneducated, compared to highly educated. While most raters accurately predict a name's race, a substantial minority of college students believe that names given by low‐SES White parents are Black names. Conclusion Examining the presence and mechanisms of bias is a vital step in fair and just decision making. This new study adds to the literature by taking an intersectional experimental approach combining ratings of racial and SES categories in a large sample of names.