Childhood Violence Exposure and Social Information Processing in Young Adults: Does Relationship With the Perpetrator Matter?

Abstract

Humans are generally biased to show implicit favoritism for in-group over out-group members, but developmental experiences may alter this process in important ways. Prior work has elucidated associations of family (i.e., in-group) violence exposure in childhood with risk for internalizing symptoms through weakened implicit favoritism for novel in-group members. In the present study, we probe whether childhood violence exposure influences implicit bias and psychopathology differentially depending on the participant’s relationship with the perpetrator (i.e., in-group vs. out-group member) at the time of exposure. We administered a minimal group-assignment paradigm and implicit-association test to 455 young adults ages 18 to 25. Young adults who experienced out-group violence in childhood showed stronger implicit in-group favoritism compared with participants who experienced in-group violence or no violence. Implicit out-group favoritism was associated with increased alcohol use. Early life experiences may shape innate preferences for novel in-group members versus out-group members in ways that have lasting implications for mental health.

Keywords

intergroup dynamics social information processing developmental psychopathology implicit bias violence exposure open data preregistration

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allport

G. W.

(1954). The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.

Ardizzi

Martini

Umiltà

M. A.

Evangelista

Ravera

Gallese

(2015). Impact of childhood maltreatment on the recognition of facial expressions of emotions. PLOS ONE, 10(10), Article e0141732. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141732

Arnett

J. J.

(2000). Emerging adulthood. A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. The American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.

Baron

A. S.

Dunham

(2015). Representing ‘us’ and ‘them’: Building blocks of intergroup cognition. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16(5), 780–801. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2014.1000459

Baumeister

R. F.

Leary

M. R.

(1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.

Bernstein

R. E.

Delker

B. C.

Knight

J. A.

Freyd

J. J.

(2015). Hypervigilance in college students: Associations with betrayal and dissociation and psychometric properties in a Brief Hypervigilance Scale. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, 7(5), 448–455. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000070

Boyd

Richerson

P. J.

Henrich

(2011). The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(Suppl. 2), 10918–10925. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1100290108

Briggs-Gowan

M. J.

Grasso

Bar-Haim

Voss

McCarthy

K. J.

Pine

D. S.

Wakschlag

L. S.

(2016). Attention bias in the developmental unfolding of posttraumatic stress symptoms in young children at risk. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 57(9), 1083–1091. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12577

Buss

A. H.

Perry

(1992). The aggression questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(3), 452–459. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.63.3.452

10.

Carpenter

T. P.

Pogacar

Pullig

Kouril

Aguilar

LaBouff

Isenberg

Chakroff

(2019). Survey-software implicit association tests: A methodological and empirical analysis. Behavior Research Methods, 51(5), 2194–2208. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01293-3

11.

Clark

Caldwell

Power

Stansfeld

S. A.

(2010). Does the influence of childhood adversity on psychopathology persist across the lifecourse? A 45-year prospective epidemiologic study. Annals of Epidemiology, 20(5), 385–394. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2010.02.008

12.

Cohen

Brown

Smaile

(2001). Child abuse and neglect and the development of mental disorders in the general population. Development and Psychopathology, 13(4), 981–999.

13.

Cvencek

Greenwald

A. G.

Meltzoff

A. N.

(2016). Implicit measures for preschool children confirm self-esteem’s role in maintaining a balanced identity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 50–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.09.015

14.

Cvencek

Meltzoff

A. N.

Greenwald

A. G.

(2011). Math-gender stereotypes in elementary school children. Child Development, 82(3), 766–779. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01529.x

15.

De Houwer

De Bruycker

. (2007). The implicit association test outperforms the extrinsic affective Simon task as an implicit measure of inter-individual differences in attitudes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46(2), 401–421. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466606X130346

16.

Dodge

K. A.

(2006). Translational science in action: Hostile attributional style and the development of aggressive behavior problems. Development and Psychopathology, 18(3), 791–814.

17.

Dodge

K. A.

Malone

P. S.

Lansford

J. E.

Sorbring

Skinner

A. T.

Tapanya

Tirado

L. M. U.

Zelli

Alampay

L. P.

Al-Hassan

S. M.

Bacchini

Bombi

A. S.

Bornstein

M. H.

Chang

Deater-Deckard

Giunta

L. D.

Oburu

Pastorelli

(2015). Hostile attributional bias and aggressive behavior in global context. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(30), 9310–9315. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418572112

18.

Dodge

K. A.

Pettit

G. S.

Bates

J. E.

Valente

(1995). Social information-processing patterns partially mediate the effect of early physical abuse on later conduct problems. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 104(4), 632–643. https://doi.org/10.1037//0021-843x.104.4.632

19.

Dotterer

H. L.

Hyde

L. W.

Swartz

J. R.

Hariri

A. R.

Williamson

D. E.

(2017). Amygdala reactivity predicts adolescent antisocial behavior but not callous-unemotional traits. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 24, 84–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.008

20.

Dunham

Baron

A. S.

Carey

(2011). Consequences of ‘minimal’ group affiliations in children. Child Development, 82(3), 793–811. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01577.x

21.

Dunham

Emory

(2014). Of affect and ambiguity: The emergence of preference for arbitrary ingroups. Journal of Social Issues, 70(1), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12048

22.

Ebner

N. C.

Riediger

Lindenberger

(2010). FACES—A database of facial expressions in young, middle-aged, and older women and men: Development and validation. Behavior Research Methods, 42(1), 351–362. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.42.1.351

23.

Emlen

S. T.

(1995). An evolutionary theory of the family. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 92(18), 8092–8099.

24.

Finkelhor

Hamby

S. L.

Ormrod

Turner

(2005). The Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire: Reliability, validity, and national norms. Child Abuse & Neglect, 29(4), 383–412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2004.11.001

25.

Finkelhor

Ormrod

R. K.

Turner

H. A.

(2009). Lifetime assessment of poly-victimization in a national sample of children and youth. Child Abuse & Neglect, 33(7), 403–411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.09.012

26.

Finkelhor

Turner

Ormrod

Hamby

Kracke

(2009, October). Children’s exposure to violence: A comprehensive national survey. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/library/publications/childrens-exposure-violence-comprehensive-national-survey

27.

Fletcher

G. J. O.

Simpson

J. A.

Campbell

Overall

N. C.

(2015). Pair-bonding, romantic love, and evolution: The curious case of “Homo sapiens.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 20–36.

28.

Fowler

P. J.

Tompsett

C. J.

Braciszewski

J. M.

Jacques-Tiura

A. J.

Baltes

B. B.

(2009). Community violence: A meta-analysis on the effect of exposure and mental health outcomes of children and adolescents. Development and Psychopathology, 21(1), 227–259. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579409000145

29.

Gibb

B. E.

Schofield

C. A.

Coles

M. E.

(2009). Reported history of childhood abuse and young adults’ information-processing biases for facial displays of emotion. Child Maltreatment, 14(2), 148–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559508326358

30.

Gosling

S. D.

Rentfrow

P. J.

Swann

W. B.

(2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1

31.

Green

J. G.

McLaughlin

K. A.

Berglund

P. A.

Gruber

M. J.

Sampson

N. A.

Zaslavsky

A. M.

Kessler

R. C.

(2010). Childhood adversities and adult psychiatric disorders in the national comorbidity survey replication I: Associations with first onset of DSM-IV disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67(2), 113–123. https://doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.186

32.

Greenwald

A. G.

Nosek

B. A.

Banaji

M. R.

(2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 197–216. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.197

33.

Guerra

N. G.

Huesmann

L. R.

Spindler

(2003). Community violence exposure, social cognition, and aggression among urban elementary school children. Child Development, 74(5), 1561–1576. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00623

34.

Hamilton

W. D.

(1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4

35.

Hein

T. C.

Monk

C. S.

(2017). Research review: Neural response to threat in children, adolescents, and adults after child maltreatment - A quantitative meta-analysis. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 58(3), 222–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12651

36.

Hofmann

Gawronski

Gschwendner

Schmitt

(2005). A meta-analysis on the correlation between the implicit association test and explicit self-report measures. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(10), 1369–1385. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205275613

37.

Jaffe

A. E.

DiLillo

Gratz

K. L.

Messman-Moore

T. L.

(2019). Risk for revictimization following interpersonal and noninterpersonal trauma: Clarifying the role of posttraumatic stress symptoms and trauma-related cognitions. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 32(1), 42–55. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22372

38.

Jenness

Peverill

Miller

Heleniak

Robertson

Sambrook

Sheridan

M. A.

McLaughlin

(2021). Alterations in neural circuits underlying emotion regulation following child maltreatment: A mechanism underlying trauma-related psychopathology. Psychological Medicine, 51(11), 1880–1889. doi:10.1017/S0033291720000641

39.

Kasparek

S. W.

Rosen

M. L.

Lurie

L. A.

Cikara

Sambrook

Cvencek

Meltzoff

A. N.

McLaughlin

K. A.

(2023). Differentiating between us & them: Reduced in-group bias as a novel mechanism linking childhood violence exposure with internalizing psychopathology. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 51(7), 961–975. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01035-2

40.

Kessler

R. C.

Berglund

Demler

Jin

Merikangas

K. R.

Walters

E. E.

(2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6), 593–602. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.62.6.593

41.

Kimonis

E. R.

Ray

J. V.

Branch

J. R.

Cauffman

(2011). Anger mediates the relation between violence exposure and violence perpetration in incarcerated boys. Child & Youth Care Forum, 40(5), 381–400. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-010-9121-7

42.

Kinzler

K. D.

Dupoux

Spelke

E. S.

(2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(30), 12577–12580. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705345104

43.

Kroenke

Spitzer

R. L.

Williams

J. B. W.

(2001). The PHQ-9. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 16(9), 606–613. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2001.016009606.x

44.

Lansford

J. E.

Ceballo

Abbey

Stewart

A. J.

(2001). Does family structure matter? A comparison of adoptive, two–parent biological, single-mother, stepfather, and stepmother households. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(3), 840–851. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00840.x

45.

Lazerus

Ingbretsen

Z. A.

Stolier

R. M.

Freeman

J. B.

Cikara

(2016). Positivity bias in judging ingroup members’ emotional expressions. Emotion, 16(8), 1117–1125. https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1037/emo0000227

46.

Lewis

S. J.

Arseneault

Caspi

Fisher

H. L.

Matthews

Moffitt

T. E.

Odgers

C. L.

Stahl

Teng

J. Y.

Danese

(2019). The epidemiology of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder in a representative cohort of young people in England and Wales. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(3), 247–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30031-8

47.

Liberman

Howard

L. H.

Vasquez

N. M.

Woodward

A. L.

(2018). Children’s expectations about conventional and moral behaviors of ingroup and outgroup members. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 165, 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.03.003

48.

Littman

Estrada

Stagnaro

M. N.

Dunham

Rand

Baskin-Sommers

(2020). Community violence and prosociality: Experiencing and committing violence predicts norm-enforcing punishment but not cooperation. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(2), 276–283.

49.

Marusak

H. A.

Martin

K. R.

Etkin

Thomason

M. E.

(2015). Childhood trauma exposure disrupts the automatic regulation of emotional processing. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(5), 1250–1258. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2014.311

50.

McCrory

E. J.

De Brito

S. A.

Sebastian

C. L.

Mechelli

Bird

Kelly

P. A.

Viding

(2011). Heightened neural reactivity to threat in child victims of family violence. Current Biology, 21(23), R947–R948. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.015

51.

McCrory

E. J.

De Brito

Kelly

Bird

Sebastian

Mechelli

Samuel

Viding

(2013). Amygdala activation in maltreated children during pre-attentive emotional processing. British Journal of Psychiatry, 202(4), 269–276. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.112.116624

52.

McLaughlin

K. A.

Greif Green

Gruber

M. J.

Sampson

N. A.

Zaslavsky

A. M.

Kessler

R. C.

(2012). Childhood adversities and first onset of psychiatric disorders in a national sample of US adolescents. Archives of General Psychiatry, 69(11), 1151–1160. https://doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.2277

53.

McLaughlin

K. A.

Koenen

K. C.

Hill

E. D.

Petukhova

Sampson

N. A.

Zaslavsky

A. M.

Kessler

R. C.

(2013). Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder in a national sample of adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 52(8), 815–830.e14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2013.05.011

54.

McLaughlin

K. A.

Sheridan

M. A.

Gold

A. L.

Duys

Lambert

H. K.

Peverill

Heleniak

Shechner

Wojcieszak

Pine

D. S.

(2016). Maltreatment exposure, brain structure, and fear conditioning in children and adolescents. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(8), 1956–1964. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.365

55.

McLaughlin

K. A.

Weissman

Bitrán

(2019). Childhood adversity and neural development: A systematic review. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 1(1), 277–312. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084950

56.

McMahon

S. D.

Felix

E. D.

Halpert

J. A.

Petropoulos

L. A. N.

(2009). Community violence exposure and aggression among urban adolescents: Testing a cognitive mediator model. Journal of Community Psychology, 37(7), 895–910. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20339

57.

Meltzoff

A. N.

(2007). ‘Like me’: A foundation for social cognition. Developmental Science, 10(1), 126–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00574.x

58.

Myers

T. D. W.

Salcedo

Frick

P. J.

Ray

J. V.

Thornton

L. C.

Steinberg

Cauffman

(2018). Understanding the link between exposure to violence and aggression in justice-involved adolescents. Development and Psychopathology, 30(2), 593–603. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579417001134

59.

O’Shea

B. A.

Glenn

J. J.

Millner

A. J.

Teachman

B. A.

Nock

M. K.

(2020). Decomposing implicit associations about life and death improves our understanding of suicidal behavior. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 50(5), 1065–1074. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12652

60.

Over

(2016). The origins of belonging: Social motivation in infants and young children. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1686), Article 20150072. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0072

61.

Peckins

M. K.

Shaw

D. S.

Waller

Hyde

L. W.

(2018). Intimate partner violence exposure predicts antisocial behavior via pro-violence attitudes among males with elevated levels of cortisol. Social Development, 27(4), 761–776. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12313

62.

Peer

Brandimarte

Samat

Acquisti

(2017). Beyond the Turk: Alternative platforms for crowdsourcing behavioral research. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 153–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.006

63.

Pollak

S. D.

Cicchetti

Hornung

Reed

(2000). Recognizing emotion in faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychology, 36(5), 679–688. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.36.5.679

64.

Pollak

S. D.

Messner

Kistler

D. J.

Cohn

J. F.

(2009). Development of perceptual expertise in emotion recognition. Cognition, 110(2), 242–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.10.010

65.

Pollak

S. D.

Sinha

(2002). Effects of early experience on children’s recognition of facial displays of emotion. Developmental Psychology, 38(5), 784–791. https://doi.org/10.1037//0012-1649.38.5.784

66.

Reid

S. C.

Salmon

Lovibond

P. F.

(2006). Cognitive biases in childhood anxiety, depression, and aggression: Are they pervasive or specific? Cognitive Therapy and Research, 30(5), 531–549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-006-9077-y

67.

Rhodes

Baron

(2019). The development of social categorization. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 1, 359–386. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084824

68.

Rhodes

Chalik

(2013). Social categories as markers of intrinsic interpersonal obligations. Psychological Science, 24(6), 999–1006. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612466267

69.

Saunders

J. B.

Aasland

O. G.

Babor

T. F.

de la Fuente

J. R.

Grant

(1993). Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO collaborative project on early detection of persons with harmful alcohol consumption–II. Addiction, 88(6), 791–804. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1993.tb02093.x

70.

Shackman

J. E.

Pollak

S. D.

(2014). Impact of physical maltreatment on the regulation of negative affect and aggression. Development and Psychopathology, 26(4, Pt. 1), 1021–1033. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579414000546

71.

Skinner

A. L.

Meltzoff

A. N.

(2019). Childhood experiences and intergroup biases among children. Social Issues and Policy Review, 13(1), 211–240. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12054

72.

Smith

N. A.

Voisin

D. R.

Yang

J. P.

Tung

E. L.

(2019). Keeping your guard up: Hypervigilance among urban residents affected by community and police violence. Health Affairs, 38(10), 1662–1669. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00560

73.

Spitzer

R. L.

Kroenke

Williams

J. B. W.

Löwe

(2006). A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: The GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 166(10), 1092–1097. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092

74.

Spoor

J. R.

Kelly

J. R.

(2004). The evolutionary significance of affect in groups: Communication and group bonding. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7(4), 398–412. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430204046145

75.

Swann

W. B.

Gómez

Seyle

D. C.

Morales

J. F.

Huici

(2009). Identity fusion: The interplay of personal and social identities in extreme group behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 995–1011. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013668

76.

Swartz

J. R.

Knodt

A. R.

Radtke

S. R.

Hariri

A. R.

(2015). A neural biomarker of psychological vulnerability to future life stress. Neuron, 85(3), 505–511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.12.055

77.

Tajfel

Turner

J. C.

(1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In Austin

W. G.

Worchel

(Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–37). Brooks/Cole.

78.

Tomasello

Melis

A. P.

Tennie

Wyman

Herrmann

(2012). Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation: The interdependsence hypothesis. Current Anthropology, 53(6), 673–692. https://doi.org/10.1086/668207

79.

Verkuyten

(2021). Group identity and ingroup bias: The social identity approach. Human Development, 65(5–6), 311–324. https://doi.org/10.1159/000519089

80.

Wilson

D. S.

Wilson

E. O.

(2007). Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 82(4), 327–348. https://doi.org/10.1086/522809

81.

Zhang

Mai

(2021). WebPower: Basic and advanced statistical power analysis (R package Version 0.6). https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=WebPower

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.79 MB