Abstract

Examining The Mediating Role of Self-Esteem on the Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Anxiety
Holli Fullbright, Michelle Coad, Lindsay Dills, Porter Maggiore
Texas Christian University, Fort Worth

Background: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events during childhood that have lasting effects into adulthood, being associated with poorer health and psychosocial well-being. The present study investigates the relationship between ACEs, self-esteem, and anxiety among people with a history of justice involvement. We predicted that ACEs would be negatively correlated with self-esteem. Self-esteem, in turn, would be negatively correlated with anxiety.
Methods: Data were collected from 216 people with a self-reported history of substance use and justice-involvement using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were required to be 18 years of age or older and fluent in the English language. Eligible participants who consented to participate in the study were asked to complete a 25-minute online survey and were compensated $1 for their time.
Results: Analyses revealed that more childhood adversity was significantly related to both higher anxiety and lower self-esteem. Further, self-esteem was significantly related to anxiety while controlling for ACEs. When self-esteem was included in the model, the relationship between ACEs and anxiety was no longer significant. In other words, self-esteem statistically mediated the relationship between childhood adversity and anxiety.
Conclusion: Findings indicate that self-esteem may be an important target for treatment among clients with histories of childhood adversity and anxiety. Self-esteem may serve as a protective factor against anxiety for clients who report a history of childhood abuse or neglect.

Past research has shown that individuals can think themselves into more extreme attitudes in the absence of learning new information about an attitude object (Tesser, 1978). Less is known, however, about whether certain types of thinking, or thought strategies, are more likely than others to make attitudes more extreme. The current study assessed whether and how a specific type of thought strategy—extrapolating beyond what is known about a social group’s personality traits—can make attitudes more extreme in the absence of new information. Participants first learned moderate trait information about two (fictitious) social groups and then self-generated extrapolations about one of the social group’s traits and reviewed the initial trait information for the second social group. Attitudes were more extreme toward the social group whose initial traits participants extrapolated than the social group whose initial traits participants reviewed. These findings extended past research and theory on the processes by which attitudes can become more extreme in the absence of new information.

Introduction: Some may believe that helicopter parenting and controlling parenting behaviors are the same, but parental control as a parenting style is distinct and separate from helicopter parenting (LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011). Helicopter parenting is a widely known parenting style that is characterized by the tendency for parents to be over-involved in the lives of their children in attempts to shield children from experiencing pain, discomfort, or failure (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012). Helicopter parenting behaviors have been linked to concerning child outcomes, however, including lowered student academic motivation and achievement (Schiffrin & Liss, 2017), decreased psychological well-being (LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011), and increased feelings of depression and anxiety (Set, 2020). Parental control, alternatively, is characterized by complete control of the child’s life while expecting compliance with parent demands without exception. Child outcomes as a result of parental control also differ such that these children tend to have greater academic achievement (Watabe & Hibbard, 2014). The goal of the current study was to further explore how parents’ helicopter parenting and controlling parenting behaviors differ in predicting their students’ psychological entitlement. It was hypothesized that both helicopter parenting and controlling parenting behaviors will predict higher student psychological entitlement with helicopter parenting predicting a greater increase.
Methods: Six hundred sixty-five undergraduate psychology students at two Southern private universities were recruited through SONA. Participants answered a battery of online questionnaires about their relationship with their parent, their parent’s personality traits, and their helicopter parenting and controlling parenting behaviors. Additionally, participants answered questions about their own personality traits, academic achievement, and overall well-being.
Results: A simultaneous multiple regression was performed to explore the association between parents’ helicopter parenting and parental control scores on their students’ psychological entitlement scores. The results showed a significant association between helicopter parenting and student psychological entitlement, b = 1.54, SE = .57, t = 2.70, p = .007, R2 = .01, with increases in helicopter parenting scores predicting an increase in student psychological entitlement scores. There was also a marginally significant association between parental control and child psychological entitlement, b = -.10, SE = .05, t = 1.95, p = .052, R2 = .01, with increases in parental control scores predicting a decrease in child psychological entitlement scores. These results suggest that helicopter parenting behaviors predict higher student psychological entitlement whereas controlling parenting behaviors predict lower student psychological entitlement. For exploratory purposes, another variable, student gender, was entered into the model to assess whether gender was a predictor of student psychological entitlement. Gender was dummy coded using females as the reference group coded as 0. The results showed that there was no significant association between students’ gender and psychological entitlement scores, b = .38, SE = .83, t = .46, p = .646, R2 = .000, suggesting that gender is not associated with one’s psychological entitlement.
Discussion: Helicopter parenting and parental control are two, distinct styles of parenting that result in differing effects on student psychological entitlement. The results of the study support the hypothesis that helicopter parenting would predict a greater increase in psychological entitlement compared to parental control, however, the results refuted the claim that both parenting styles would predict increases in psychological entitlement as parental control predicted a moderately significant decrease in entitlement. Future research should examine whether these results replicate among more racially diverse and younger samples. Having a richer understanding of the parental contributors to the development of child psychological entitlement over the span of childhood and adolescence will aid professionals in identifying and changing problematic parental behaviors to decrease these outcomes.

 
References
LeMoyne, T., & Buchanan, T. (2011). Does “hovering” matter? Helicopter parenting and its effect on well-being. Sociological Spectrum, 31(4), 399-418. https://doi.org/10.1080/02732173.2011.574038
Padilla‐Walker, L.M., & Nelson, L.J. (2012). Black Hawk down? Establishing helicopter parenting as a distinct construct from other forms of parental control during emerging adulthood. Journal of Adolescence, 35(5), 1177-90. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2012.03.007
Schiffrin, H.H., & Liss, M. (2017). The effects of helicopter parenting on academic motivation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26, 1472-1480. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0658-z
Set, Z. (2020). The mediating role of inflated sense of self and impulsivity in the relationship between helicopter parenting and psychological symptoms. Archives of Neuropsychology, 57(4), 318-324. https://doi.org/10.29399/npa.24942
Watabe, A., & Hibbard, D. R. (2014). The influence of authoritarian and authoritative parenting on children’s academic achievement motivation: A comparison between the United States and Japan. North American Journal of Psychology, 16(2), 359–382.

Assessing staff attitudes and needs in a trauma-informed organization: a mixed-methods study
Background: Prior research has found that high burnout rates are prevalent in organizations that work
with individuals who have experienced trauma. Furthermore, high burnout is associated with secondary
traumatic stress, which can affect staff’s ability to provide care to clients. Therefore, the purpose of the
current study was to identify staff satisfaction and departmental needs at an organization specializing in
family services for those who have experienced trauma.
Methods: An online survey, including qualitative and quantitative questions, was developed via
Qualtrics and emailed to one non-profit organization. The results are comprised of responses from 20
employees.
Result: Overall, the participants rated their organization favorably. The average burnout and secondary
traumatic stress levels were low, which indicates no issues present in these categories. Simple linear
regression was used to test if burnout significantly predicted secondary traumatic stress. It was found
that burnout significantly predicted secondary traumatic stress (β = .57, p = .001). These results were
corroborated by qualitative data from staff, where staff demonstrated a general positive experience
within their work environment. However, when prompted staff identified aspects of the organization
that could be improved: the low number of staff employed, staff coordination and training, open
communication between coworkers and supervisors, reinstating staff events, and increased access to
mental health services.
Limitations: This study is limited by its small sample size and may not be generalizable to other
organizations, as only one organization was assessed.
Conclusion: The current study found that burnout predicts secondary traumatic stress. Overall, the staff
assessed feel that their organization is a positive work environment but identified areas for
improvement such as the number of staff, training, communication, the addition of social events, and
access to mental health services. Addressing staff concerns could reduce staff burnout and increase
satisfaction. Additionally, ensuring that staff needs are met could also benefit clients, as staff and
organizational factors are related to the quality of services.

A deterministic position claims that all events, including human choice behavior, are caused by other events (e.g., a person’s environment and past experiences). In contrast, indeterminism, or free will, maintains that a decision can emanate solely from within (i.e., independent of external influences). Previous research found that participants who read deterministic passages cheated more on an arithmetic test than those who read free will passages (Vohs & Schooler, 2008). The current research examined how the valence of the outcomes in passages influenced behavior (i.e., cheating). Experiment 1 examined how positive or negative participants rated passages that described an action within a deterministic or indeterministic universe that ended in a positive (e.g., a rescued child), negative (e.g., a lost child), or neutral (e.g., a child sitting) outcome. In Experiment 2, participants read one of the above mentioned passages followed by an additional 9 passages and comprehension questions. After reading each passage, a click to a “Show Questions” button made the passage disappear and the comprehension questions appear. To manipulate cheating, on some passages, the questions were automatically displayed while the passage was visible. Participants could answer the questions with the passage visible or click “Show Questions” to remove it. Results will be discussed in terms of the reported valence and the number of times “show questions” was clicked.