The Relationship between Childhood Trauma and Aggression: The Mediating Roles of Emotion Regulation and Hostile Interpretation Bias
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2022-01-01
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en
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Childhood events shape an individual’s behaviour later in life. If maladaptive social knowledge and schemas are acquired due to childhood trauma, a lack of emotion regulation can influence how emotions in social situations are read and interpreted. If they are interpreted in a hostile way, they might lead to aggressive behaviour. The tendency to interpret ambiguous social information as hostile is called hostile interpretation bias. The aim of this study was to find out whether emotion regulation and the hostile interpretation bias mediate the relationship between childhood trauma and aggression. It was expected that there is a relationship between childhood trauma and aggression, and that this association was mediated by emotion regulation and by the hostile interpretation bias. In this study, 174 participants completed three questionnaires (CTQ, AQ and DERS-16) and the hostile interpretation bias task online. Two simple mediation analysis were conducted to examine the relationship between childhood trauma and aggression, and to separately examine the role of emotion regulation and the hostile interpretation bias as mediators. The main relationship between childhood trauma and aggression was significant. Also, emotion regulation significantly mediates the relationship between childhood trauma and aggression. The hostile interpretation bias does not mediate the relationship between childhood trauma and aggression. All in all, this study demonstrates that emotion regulation is a working mechanism of the relationship between childhood trauma and aggression, while the hostile interpretation bias is not.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen