Childhood Sexual Abuse, Personality, and Risk Recognition

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and personality in predicting risk recognition among college-aged women. Participants included 223 female undergraduate students at Illinois State University. Students were presented the opportunity to receive extra credit for participating in the study. Participants completed a demographics questionnaire, the Big Five Inventory, and the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5-Brief Form. Participants then read through a risk recognition vignette that was divided into 13 scenes and were asked to indicate when they were no longer comfortable in the situation and when they would leave the situation. Over a third of participants (37.7%) reported a history of CSA and were placed in the CSA group. CSA was not related to higher response latency. CSA was found to be related to higher levels of negative affectivity, psychoticism, and disinhibition, as well as higher levels of neuroticism and lower levels of agreeableness. Neuroticism was significantly negatively correlated with risk recognition. Finally, psychoticism and neuroticism were significantly related to risk recognition when controlling for other variables.