Revictimization, Emotional Regulation and PTSD

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent theoretical writings suggest that the ineffective regulation of negative emotional states may reduce the ability of women to detect and respond effectively to situational and interpersonal factors that increase risk for sexual assault. Although studies have found relationships between negative emotions and maladaptive responses to stressful interpersonal situations, there is a paucity of research examining the relationship between emotions and individuals' abilities to detect risk for sexual assault. Therefore, one goal of the proposed project is to examine the impact of experimentally-induced negative mood on risk response impairments. Furthermore, based on research suggesting that prior sexual victimization increases risk for sexual assault, this study will investigate whether a history of prior sexual victimization interacts with negative mood to further increase impairments in risk responses. Finally, studies have found that some emotion regulation strategies are less adaptive than others. For example, the emotion regulation strategy of suppression (concealing emotional states) requires significant cognitive resources and can impair memory for emotional events. Thus, it is possible that individuals who engage in suppression may be less adept at identifying and responding to situational cues that signify increased risk of assault. As such, this study also will explore whether sexually victimized women are more likely to use suppression during a hypothetical sexual assault vignette, and whether the use of suppression mediates the relationship between sexual victimization and risk recognition deficits. The present study will recruit a sample of undergraduate women to ensure a substantial base rate of sexual victimization. Participants will be randomly assigned to either a neutral or negative mood induction procedure. After, they will hear a sexual assault vignette depicting a coercive dating situation, during which they will be instructed to indicate when the male in the vignette has "gone too far" and to describe how they would respond as the female in the vignette. Participants then will complete self-report measures indicating the degree to which they utilized particular emotion regulation strategies when making judgments about the vignette. Finally, participants will be instructed to recall as many details of the vignette as possible in order to examine the cognitive costs of regulating emotional experiences during the sexual assault vignette. Sexual victimization is an endemic societal problem that has been associated with myriad sequelae such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, interpersonal difficulties, and serious health problems such as HIV. Thus, understanding risk factors for victimization is critical to the development of effective sexual assault prevention and treatment programs.