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Violence / Aggression

Mothers’ Emotion Socialization and Experiential Avoidance Explain the Association between Child Sexual Abuse and Psychological Distress Among College Women

(PS1-C66) Mothers’ Emotion Socialization and Experiential Avoidance Explain the Association Between Child Sexual Abuse and Psychological Distress Among College Women

Friday, November 18, 2022

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EST

Location: Westside Ballroom, 5th Floor

Author(s)

Benjamin W. Katz, B.A.

Graduate Student
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Shorewood, Wisconsin

Co-Author(s)

PL

Patricia J. Long, Ph.D.

Professor, Academic Director, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
University of New England
Waldoboro, Maine

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a significant problem linked to adjustment problems in emerging adulthood (Briere & Jordan, 2009). It has long been suggested that many factors may explain this relationship (Polusny & Follette, 1995). Experiential avoidance (EA; defined as the use of rigid cognitive, affective, and behavioral patterns to avoid negative internal events that elicit distress; Hayes et al., 1996) is one such factor as it explains the link between childhood abuse and psychological distress (Katz & Long, under review). Emotion socialization, defined as how socialization agents (such as caregivers) attend and respond to individuals’ emotions (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007), may be another factor (Thomas et al., 2011). Early maladaptive emotion socialization may impact how individuals respond to their negative internal states, including emotions (Linehan, 1993), particularly in the context of CSA. However, to date no research has simultaneously evaluated the roles of emotion socialization and EA in explaining the association between CSA and psychological distress. The aim of this study was to evaluate this conceptual model.

Participants were 471 female college students recruited from a psychology department research participant pool. Participants completed anonymous web-based questionnaires including the Life Experiences Questionnaire, the Emotions as a Child Scale: Child Report Version 1.1, the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire, and the Brief Symptom Inventory.
The effect of the predictor variable (child sexual abuse; CSA) on the criterion variable (psychological distress; PD) was examined serially through two proposed mediators: maladaptive emotion socialization by mothers (MES) and EA. Analyses were conducted using model 6 in PROCESS Version 3.5 (Hayes, 2018) for SPSS Version 27. Bootstrapping with 5000 iterations and a 95% confidence interval was applied to examine the significance of specific indirect, or mediational, effects.

Results of the serial mediation analysis indicated that the overall direct effects model with each of the mediators included was significant, full model R²= .32, p < .0001. Considered alone, CSA predicted PD, (path a = 0.17, CI₉₅ [0.02, 0.06]). However, support was found for partial mediation as CSA predicted greater PD through the serial effect of mothers’ MES and EA (standardized indirect effect = 0.01, CI₉₅ [0.001, 0.02]), as well as through the effect of MES alone (standardized indirect effect = 0.03, CI₉₅ [0.005, 0.07]). Research and clinical implications will be discussed as they pertain to work with adult survivors of CSA.