Social Cognition and Revictimization Risk

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The ability to accurately detect violations in social contracts likely helps people to avoid or to withdraw from relationships in which they are at risk of being cheated or harmed. Betrayal trauma theory argues that detecting violations of social contracts may be counter-productive to survival under certain conditions, such as when a victim is dependent on a perpetrator. When dependent on a perpetrator (as in the case of child abuse perpetrated by a caregiver), the victim may be better able to preserve the necessary attachment with the caregiver by remaining unaware of the abuse. Thus, the victim may develop a compromised capacity to detect violations of social contracts in the caregiving relationship. Over time, the victim may develop more generalized problems detecting violations in social exchange rules; in turn, generalized problems in detecting violations of social contracts may increase risk for later victimization. Participants in the current study were asked to detect violations in three types of conditional (if-then) rules: abstract, social contract (rules involving a social exchange), and precautionary (rules involving safety). Young adults who reported experiences of revictimization made more errors on social contract and precautionary problems than a no revictimization group; group performance did not differ for abstract problems, suggesting these findings are not explained by general deficits in conditional reasoning. Pathological dissociation significantly predicted errors on social contract and precautionary problems. [ A range of deleterious consequences has been associated with child maltreatment, ranging from mental health to physical health problems. Childhood maltreatment predicts not only mental and physical health consequences, but also places the individual at risk for future victimization (e.g., Browne & Finkelhor, 1986;Cloitre, 1998;Cloitre, Tardiff, Marzuk, Leon, & Potera, 1996;Polusny & Follette, 1995;Wyatt, Guthrie, Notgrass, 1992). Links between childhood maltreatment, particularly sexual abuse, and later sexual victimization have been clearly established (for a review, see Arata, 2002). Retrospective research on revictimization has tended to focus on the relationship between child sexual abuse and later sexual assault in samples of adolescent and young adult females across settings including college (e.g., Arata, 2000;Gidycz, Coble, Latham, & Layman, 1993;Gidycz, Hanson, & Layman, 1995), community (e.g., Dancu, Riggs, Hearst-Ikeda, Shoyer, & Foa, 1996Wyatt et al., 1992;Russell, 1986) and treatment (e.g., Cloitre et al., 1996). Though studies vary in their methods and definitions of victimization, this body of research suggests that females sexually abused in childhood are at two to three times the risk of experiencing later sexual victimization (Arata, 2002) with a moderate effect size of .59 (Roodman & Clum, 2001).While much of the literature has focused on sexual revictimization, researchers are increasingly including both sexual and physical maltreatment in studies of...

The state of betrayal trauma theory: Reply to McNally—Conceptual issues, and future directions

“…Presumably, a dependent child who receives minimal care is at an advantage compared to a child who receives less than minimal care; thus, unawareness of the betrayal may help the child engage in attachment behaviours that ensure at least the minimal care offered by the abusive caregiver. Recent research by DePrince (2005) points to conditions under which the cheaterdetection abilities proposed by Cosmides (1989) are actually impaired, supporting the BTT proposition that some experiences may be associated with diminished ability to detect betrayals. DePrince found that young adults who reported interpersonal revictimisations made more errors on social contract problems than those who did not report revictimisations; the groups did not differ in number of errors made in response to abstract (non-social) problems.…”

Emotional Regulation and Revictimization in Women’s Intimate Relationships

“…In addition, romantic relationships can provoke memories and emotions associated with childhood abuse, but using avoidant strategies to regulate these emotions may result in restricted affectionate behaviors and interfere with establishing intimacy (Polusny & Follette, 1995). Consistent with this explanation, a large body of evidence has confirmed the association between revictimization and both emotional avoidant strategies (Alexander, 2009;DePrince, 2005;Filipas & Ullman, 2006;Sandberg, Matorin, & Lynn, 1999) and post-traumatic ER problems (Arta, 2002;Dietrich, 2007;Sandberg et al, 1999). Ineffective ER was also found to be associated with decreased relationship quality (Carstensen, Gottman, & Levenson, 1995;Davila, Bradbury, & Finchman, 1998).…”

Systematic search of Bayesian statistics in the field of psychotraumatology

“…A second reason to use Bayes is because of the updating of prior knowledge with data into the posterior, for example in the computation of taxon membership (Allen, Fultz, Huntoon, & Brethour, 2002; DePrince, 2005; Goodman et al, 2003). As explained by Goodman et al (2003), the probability of a taxon membership can be computed based on what is known before any data are collected.…”