Psychology, Department of
Date of this Version
2012
Citation
WALSH ET AL. , JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE 27 (2012)
Abstract
The present study examined whether and which facets of emotion dysregulation serve an interven-ing role in the association between prior victimization and risk perception in an analogue sexual assault vignette. Participants were 714 university women who completed self-report measures of sexual victimization, emotion dysregulation, and a computer-administered written vignette of a col-lege party scene that culminates in acquaintance rape. Approximately 42% of the sample reported lifetime sexual victimization during childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Two individual aspects of emotion dysregulation, limited access to emotion regulation strategies and impulse control diffi-culties, mediated the association between lifetime victimization and leaving the scenario later. Find-ings suggest the importance of emotion dysregulation in predicting risk perception among victims and of improving victims’ emotion regulation skills in revictimization risk reduction interventions.