Child Psychology Commons^™

Childhood Abuse, Invalidation, And Personality In A College Population, Kayleigh M. Heard

Honors College Theses

Studies show the detrimental effects of childhood maltreatment (i.e., childhood physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse, invalidation, and multiple forms of maltreatment; Afifi et al., 2016). Research demonstrates individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment have distinct patterns of personality characteristics (Allen & Lauterbach, 2007). Specifically, individuals with history of childhood maltreatment typically report high neuroticism, high openness, and low agreeableness compared to those with no history of maltreatment (Distel et al., 2009; Huang et al., 2012). Less is known about personality differences among individuals with different forms of childhood maltreatment (e.g., physical abuse vs. sexual abuse vs. invalidation vs. multiple …