PERSONALITY INFERENCES DRAWN ABOUT ABUSIVE MOTHERS

This study investigated the personality inferences people draw about a busive mothers by having 287 subjects view videotapes of four female t argets engaged in social discourse with other adults. Some subjects we re primed beforehand to believe that the female targets had physically abused or neglected their child and other subjects viewed the tapes w ithout being primed. Afterward, all subjects rated the targets' person alities using 17 bipolar trait scales and estimating the likelihood of six social behaviors. Analyses compared the ratings of the two types of abuse groups (physical abuse and neglect) with each other and with the unprimed control group. Analysis showed that ratings of one or bot h of the abuse groups differed from those of the control group on 10 o f the 17 trait dimensions and four of six social behaviors. Implicatio ns are drawn about the social forces experienced by abusive mothers an d the possible role of such forces in therapeutic change.