NCJ Number
167614
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 12 Issue: 4 Dated: (August 1997) Pages: 600-606
Date Published
1997
Length
7 pages
Annotation
Drawing on Higgins, Klein, and Strauman's (1985) self- discrepancy theory of anxiety and depression, this study investigated the relationship between violence in childhood and later discrepancies in young adults between their perceptions of their actual self and the self they felt they ought to be or would ideally like to be.
Abstract
Forty questionnaires were administered to secondary school pupils 16 to 18 years old; 40 were also administered to first-year university students. The response rate was 82 percent, yielding 66 usable questionnaires. Thirty-two respondents were male and 34 female. Half the participants completed the Selves Questionnaire first, followed by the Conflict Tactics Scale; the other half completed them in reverse order. Reports of harsh punishment in childhood were found to be modestly associated with greater discrepancies between how participants saw their actual selves and how they felt they ought to be. Violence in childhood was associated with discrepancies between the actual and ought self, a vulnerability factor for anxiety, but not between the actual and ideal self, a pattern thought to confer vulnerability to depression. This suggests that the well-established relation between violence and depression may be mediated by other types of vulnerability factors or other self-discrepancies. The data failed to provide evidence of a direct link between childhood violence and self-discrepancies in early adulthood. Instead, they were consistent with two alternative models: parental violence gives rise to parental discrepancies in how they perceive their children, which in turn promote self-discrepancies in their offspring; and parental discrepancies lead separately to violence and to the development of self-discrepancies in their offspring. Study limitations are noted. 1 table and 19 references