Childhood maltreatment is associated with distrust and negatively biased emotion processing.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Cognitive models of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) propose that trauma entails cognitive alterations of increased distrust and perceived threat from others. We tested whether these predictions also hold in individuals with varying levels of childhood maltreatment (CM), which is much more prevalent than traumatic events as required for a PTSD diagnosis. We hypothesized that higher levels of CM would entail greater distrust and perceived threat, and that distrust would be more change-resistant in participants with more CM.

Methods

The study was pre-registered; the pre-registration protocol, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/pufy2/ . We recruited 549 participants (M age = 29.2, 74.5% women) for an online study via websites related to CM, Borderlin

SUBMITTER: Hepp J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7856450 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature