Interpersonal Harm Research Articles

Constructing Sacred Containers for Participatory Action Research: An Embodied Mindfulness Arts-Based Practice.

College campuses are sites of institutional betrayal and interpersonal harm for too many survivors of gender-based violence. In pursuit of change aligned with empowerment frameworks and feminist epistemologies, many of us create spaces for impacted students to engage in participatory action research and learning. This article describes a mindfulness, arts-based embodied practice for transforming settings and positioning participants as visionaries and experts on safety, power, and well-being. Through intentional dyadic and collective discussion, the Sacred Containers form the foundation for a coconstructed community. This article describes the rationale, process, impact, and recommendations via student and faculty reflections across four cohorts.

Hermeneutical Injustice, Nonbinary Gender Identities and Category Invalidation

ABSTRACT This paper argues for category invalidation as a novel and distinct form of epistemic injustice that people who belong to a non-established social category face. This paper explores category invalidation in the context of nonbinary genders or people whose gender identity lies outside of the established gender binary, and who are placed in a marginalized position by virtue of their gender identity. Category invalidation is a form of hermeneutical injustice that consists of having one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding. Nonbinary people face category invalidation when their claims for their gender identity are met with a denial of the existence of the social category of nonbinary. While category invalidation stems from inaccurate and misinformed hermeneutical resources, it is also actively maintained by dominant knowers who refuse to adopt new and more accurate epistemic resources that marginalized knowers could provide. Category invalidation presents three harms to individuals, which are harms to self-conception, interpersonal harms and structural harms. This can result in diminished resources of self-understanding, not being treated as credible sources of information concerning their own gender and not being recognized as nonbinary on a legal or communal level.

Using RECAST theory to examine racial stress appraisal across high schools: Differences in racial threat and support

Data from 318 diverse high school students from three different types of high schools in the United States were collected. School types varied by location (e.g., suburban, urban), size, and student demographics (e.g., race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to examine the factor structure of the STRESS-Y. Mean comparisons were performed to assess variations in Racial Stress Appraisal across different school types. The EFA of the STRESS-Y confirmed its factor structure, supporting its validity as a measure of RSA in youth and we were able to extract two robust factors—Racial Threat Appraisal and Racial Support Appraisal. Mean comparisons revealed that Racial Threat Appraisal and Racial Support Appraisal varied across different school types, highlighting the influence of school context on students' experiences of racial stress. This study provides evidence for the validity of the STRESS-Y as a measure of Racial Stress Appraisal in youth. The findings demonstrate the importance of considering school type as a factor influencing students' experiences of racial stress as well as how support, racial coping, and stress management skills may help mitigate ongoing interpersonal harm that youth are experiencing. The validated measure and the understanding of the factors contributing to Racial Stress Appraisal can inform interventions aimed at supporting students in managing and coping with racial stressors in their respective school environments.

Tracking Regret and Guilt: The Context of Harm and Trait Mindfulness

Being exceedingly social creatures, each and every decision that an individual human makes carries with it consequences and risks that may endanger not only themselves (intrapersonal harm), but also others (interpersonal harm). This experiment (N = 215 undergraduates; 63.36% female; Mage = 21.86, SD = 2.56) compared the impact of contextual harm on emotions of regret and guilt, and examined whether the role of a trait-relevant predictor in the form of mindfulness on regret/guilt could be explained by tendency of being under-engaged (trait alexithymia) and over-engaged (trait rumination) of affective experiences. In line with our predictions, (i) interpersonal harm aroused more guilt than intrapersonal harm, but the levels of regret between the two contexts were not unalike; (ii) mindfulness negatively correlated with alexithymia, rumination, regret, and guilt; and (iii) after controlling for type of harm, the relation between mindfulness and regret/guilt was mediated by alexithymia and rumination. Although guilt depends heavily on interpersonal context while regret is induced more globally, mindfulness inversely predicts the levels of both emotions through alexithymia and rumination

Addressing anti-black racism in an academic preterm birth initiative: perspectives from a mixed methods case study

BackgroundGrowing recognition of racism perpetuated within academic institutions has given rise to anti-racism efforts in these settings. In June 2020, the university-based California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) committed to an Anti-Racism Action Plan outlining an approach to address anti-Blackness. This case study assessed perspectives on PTBi’s anti-racism efforts to support continued growth toward racial equity within the initiative.MethodsThis mixed methods case study included an online survey with multiple choice and open-ended survey items (n = 27) and key informant interviews (n = 8) of leadership, faculty, staff, and trainees working within the initiative. Survey and interview questions focused on perspectives about individual and organizational anti-racism competencies, perceived areas of initiative success, and opportunities for improvement. Qualitative interview and survey data were coded and organized into common themes within assessment domains.ResultsMost survey respondents reported they felt competent in all the assessed anti-racism skills, including foundational knowledge and responding to workplace racism. They also felt confident in PTBi’s commitment to address anti-Blackness. Fewer respondents were clear on strategic plans, resources allocated, and how the anti-racism agenda was being implemented. Suggestions from both data sources included further operationalizing and communicating commitments, integrating an anti-racism lens across all activities, ensuring accountability including staffing and funding consistent with anti-racist approaches, persistence in hiring Black faculty, providing professional development and support for Black staff, and addressing unintentional interpersonal harms to Black individuals.ConclusionsThis case study contributes key lessons which move beyond individual-level and theoretical approaches towards transparency and accountability in academic institutions aiming to address anti-Black racism. Even with PTBi’s strong commitment and efforts towards racial equity, these case study findings illustrate that actions must have sustained support by the broader institution and include leadership commitment, capacity-building via ongoing coaching and training, broad incorporation of anti-racism practices and procedures, continuous learning, and ongoing accountability for both short- and longer-term sustainable impact.

Evaluating traumatic event scoring schemas for their predictive value to concurrent diagnostic profiles: Texas Childhood Trauma Research Network

BackgroundTo prospectively chart pathways of risk and resiliency following childhood trauma studies need to address three limitations of prior work: 1) recruit beyond social service/ treatment settings; 2) include broad spectrum of trauma types and 3) cast a broad longitudinal measurement framework of both clinical diagnoses and traumatic exposures. The Texas-Childhood Trauma Research Network (TX-CTRN) is a multi-site collaboration that addresses these limitations. In this baseline-only report, we examined domains of trauma and evaluated the concurrent predictive validity of various traumatic event scoring schemas for clinical diagnoses. MethodsBroad-base recruitment of 8–20 year-olds (N = 1289) included trauma centers, emergency departments, pediatric and primary care clinics, and other community settings. Assessments were comprehensive and based on clinical interviews by trained research interviewers. ResultsFactor analyses supported a five-factor solution of trauma domains including unintentional/acute, intentional/interpersonal, bullying, in-home versus community witnessed interpersonal harms. Trauma burden scoring schemas were examined for their predictive superiority. Domain-specific counts of traumas that met DSM-5 post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) Criterion-A was the best overall schema in distinguishing among youth with no diagnosis, comorbidities, those with depression, suicidality, substance misuse, and PTSD. LimitationsThere were no assessments of neglect. ConclusionsFindings largely aligned with earlier studies on the relative importance of intentional interpersonal traumas and showed bullying may be an important source of traumatic stress that independently adds to prediction of several diagnoses and should be considered in clinical practice.

Objects Do Not Suffer: An Impact of Mechanistic Dehumanization on Perceptions of Women's Suffering and Lack of Justice in Domestic Assault.

Women constitute an overwhelming majority of those who experience domestic violence; furthermore, the vast majority of perpetrators of domestic violence go unsentenced. The objectification of women innately implies the denial of humanness, and dehumanization is known to play a role in willingness to engage in and acceptance of interpersonal harm. Yet, important questions remain. The current study examines the type of humanness objectified women are being denied, and how that denial implicates perceptions surrounding domestic assault. We predict that associating women with objects, and not animals, may be uniquely implicated in the lack of consequences for perpetrators-for objects cannot feel pain. In the current study (N = 319), we manipulated the presentation of a woman as sexualized or not and purported that she had been involved in a domestic violence incident. We found that when the target woman was sexualized (and thus objectified), participants associated her with an inert, non-human object (i.e., mechanistically dehumanized her) more than when she was not sexually objectified, but we found no effect of sexualization on animalistic dehumanization. Furthermore, mechanistic dehumanization mediated decreases in perceptions of the sexually objectified woman's suffering as a result of the domestic violence, which decreased the severity of the punishment participants recommended for the perpetrator, while also, increasing victim, and decreasing perpetrator, blame. We discuss critical considerations of the role of dehumanization in domestic violence directed toward women and the lack of consequences for perpetrators of these crimes.

"We Don't Want a Bird Cage, We Want Guardrails": Understanding & Designing for Preventing Interpersonal Harm in Social VR through the Lens of Consent

As social Virtual Reality (VR) grows in prevalence, new possibilities for embodied and immersive social interaction emerge, including varied forms of interpersonal harm. Yet, challenges remain regarding defining, identifying, and mitigating said harm in social VR. In this paper, we take an alternative approach to understanding and designing solutions for interpersonal harm in social VR through the lens of consent, which circumvents the lack of consensus and social norms on what should be defined as harm in social VR and reflects the embodied, immersive, and offline-world-like nature of harm in social VR. Through interviews with 39 social VR users, we offer one of the first empirical explorations on how social VR users understand consent as "boundaries," (re)purpose existing social VR features for practicing consent as "boundary setting," and envision the design of future consent mechanics in social VR to balance protection and interaction expectations to mitigate interpersonal harm as "boundary violations" in social VR. This work makes significant contributions to CSCW and HCI research by (1) uncovering how social VR users craft novel conceptualizations of consent as boundaries and harm as unwanted boundary violations, and (2) providing three foundational principles for designing future consent mechanics in social VR informed by actual social VR users.

Addressing Interpersonal Harm in Online Gaming Communities: The Opportunities and Challenges for a Restorative Justice Approach

Most social media platforms implement content moderation to address interpersonal harms such as harassment. Content moderation relies on offender-centered, punitive approaches, e.g., bans and content removal. We consider an alternative justice framework, restorative justice, which aids victims in healing, supports offenders in repairing the harm, and engages community members in addressing the harm collectively. To assess the utility of restorative justice in addressing online harm, we interviewed 23 users from Overwatch gaming communities, including moderators, victims, and offenders; such communities are particularly susceptible to harm, with nearly three quarters of all online game players suffering from some form of online abuse. We study how the communities currently handle harm cases through the lens of restorative justice and examine their attitudes toward implementing restorative justice processes. Our analysis reveals that cultural, technical, and resource-related obstacles hinder implementation of restorative justice within the existing punitive framework despite online community needs and existing structures to support it. We discuss how current content moderation systems can embed restorative justice goals and practices and overcome these challenges.

Incivility and interpersonal harm in organizational context: A qualitative exploration of values in STEM training programs.

This study investigates science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) PhD students' perceptions of organizational values and incivility. Interviews with 26 STEM PhD students elicited examples of and perceptions surrounding incivility and related harms. Productivity, prestige, expertise, objectivity, self-sufficiency, and collaboration values were identified. Each included aspects deemed useful (e.g., productivity fueling discovery; expertise facilitating learning) as well as potentially contributing to harm when weaponized (e.g., productivity appeared in incivility stories when one "looked down" on those who did not work long days; expertise appeared when people gossiped about intelligence). Some aspects of collaboration (e.g., long-lasting working relationships fueling scientific discovery) may be protective. Organizational values such as productivity appeared to supersede considerations such as well-being. Current framing of these values may bolster refusal to engage in or support social justice and mental health efforts, which some participants identified as needed. Implications across settings are discussed.

The Insurgent Agency of Incarcerated Trans Women of Color

How do trans women of color build lives in the context of carceral violence? The literature on transgender incarceration emphasizes violation but undertheorizes agency. Thus, while patterned victimization is well documented, we know far less about how incarcerated trans women of color understand their situation and struggle for safety and dignity. Drawing on semistructured interviews with thirty-two formerly incarcerated trans women, I answer this question by applying an intersectional, abolitionist feminist framework to the empirical study of trans women’s lives behind bars. The article begins by proposing a theory of violence that connects racially gendered interpersonal harm to the systemic harms of penal institutions. The immobilization and bodily dispossession inherent in imprisonment facilitates assaults by prison guards and other prisoners. The article then turns to the ways trans women of color employ embodied social and economic strategies to meet their needs behind bars, including the need for safety. By centering the insurgent practices of incarcerated trans women of color, this study provides new insights into prison life, the intersection of state and interpersonal violence, and possibilities for agency under radical constraint.

“I’m Trapped Here”: Ethnography, Structural Violence, and Moral Injury

In scenes of deep poverty and precarity, intimate relationships are shaped by the moral aftermath of a life of surviving scarcity. These moral histories are riddled with interpersonal harm, experiences of harming others and being seriously harmed oneself. As intimacy deepens, so does the prospect of harm, mistrust, and humiliation. These relational experiences can erode moral agency, or the sense that one is deserving of love and has the capacity to be seen as a ‘good’ person (Myers 2019; Blacksher 2002). Within the hermeneutic of moral injury—a concept largely defined by and elaborated in clinical settings—this Position Piece explores the messy relational life of scarcity in the context of conducting ethnography. Further, it examines the ethnographer’s responsibility to respond to such lives with an attention to moral injury and moral agency (Carpenter-Song 2019). This journey, guided by personal commitment, can lead to engagements that do not feel like care, yet are. This essay explores this reformulation of care as moral labour while concluding with the political stakes of this mode of intimate work.

A new era in child maltreatment prevention: call to action.

A new era in child maltreatment prevention: call to action.

Expanded Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Adult Cannabis Use: A Latent Class Analysis.

In addition to traditionally assessed abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include adversities like racial discrimination, community violence, and bullying. Prior research established associations between the original ACEs and substance use, but few used Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to examine patterns of ACEs. Examining patterns of ACEs may yield additional insights beyond cumulative risk studies focusing only on the number of different ACEs experiences. Therefore, we identified associations between latent classes of ACEs and cannabis use. Studies on ACES rarely examine cannabis use outcomes, which is important as cannabis remains one of the most commonly used substances and is associated with negative effects on health. Yet it is still unclear how ACEs influence cannabis use. Participants were adults in Illinois (n = 712) recruited through Qualtrics' online quota-sampling method. They completed measures of 14 ACEs, past 30-day and lifetime cannabis use, medical cannabis use (DFACQ) and probable cannabis use disorders (CUDIT-R-SF). Latent class analyses were performed using ACEs. We identified four classes, labeled: Low Adversity, Interpersonal Harm, Interpersonal Abuse and Harm, and High Adversity. The largest effect sizes (p<.05) were observed for those in the High Adversity class, who had elevated risks for lifetime (OR =6.2), 30-day (OR = 5.05), and medicinal cannabis use (OR = 17.9) relative to those in the Low Adversity class. Those in the Interpersonal Abuse and Harm and Interpersonal Harm classes also had increased odds (p<.05) for lifetime (OR =2.44/OR=2.82), 30-day (OR = 4.88/OR= 2.53), and medicinal cannabis use (OR = 2.59/OR =1.67(ns)) relative to those in the Low Adversity class. However, no class with elevated ACEs had higher odds for CUD relative to the Low Adversity class. Additional research could further disentangle these findings using extensive measures of CUD. Additionally, as participants in the High Adversity class had higher odds of medicinal cannabis use, future research could carefully study their consumption patterns.

The tethered humanity hypothesis among victims of interpersonal harm: The role of apologies, forgiveness, and the relation between self-, other-, and meta-perceptions of humanity

When interpersonal harm is inflicted, victims stop seeing themselves as fully human. The tethered humanity hypothesis proposes that victims restore a full human status when perpetrators undertake attempts at reconciliation and victims manage to reestablish the humanness of their perpetrators. In two studies, we tested this hypothesis and manipulated the perpetrators attempts at apologizing for their misconduct. Participants were either included or socially excluded and received a full or self-exonerating apology or a hostile message when they were excluded. Results indicated that victims dehumanized themselves and their ostracizers when they were socially excluded and managed to regain a full human status and rehumanized their perpetrators when a full apology was uttered. Moreover, regression analyses indicated that different humanness judgments (self, other, and meta-humanness) become tethered only when perpetrators apologized, while forgiving the perpetrator always correlated with the rehumanization of the self regardless of the perpetrator’s apology.

The Problem of Purity in Moral Psychology

Academic The idea of “purity” transformed moral psychology. Here, we provide the first systematic review of this concept. Although often discussed as one construct, we reveal ~9 understandings of purity, ranging from respecting God to not eating gross things. This striking heterogeneity arises because purity—unlike other moral constructs—is not understood by what it is but what it isn’t: obvious interpersonal harm. This poses many problems for moral psychology and explains why purity lacks convergent and divergent validity and why purity is confounded with politics, religion, weirdness, and perceived harm. Because purity is not a coherent construct, it cannot be a distinct basis of moral judgment or specially tied to disgust. Rather than a specific moral domain, purity is best understood as a loose set of themes in moral rhetoric. These themes are scaffolded on cultural understandings of harm—the broad, pluralistic harm outlined by the Theory of Dyadic Morality. Public People are fascinated by morality—how do people make moral judgments and why do liberals and conservatives seem to frequently disagree? “Purity” is one moral concept often discussed when talking about morality—it has been suggested to capture moral differences across politics and to demonstrate the evolutionary roots of morality, especially the role of disgust in moral judgment. However, despite the many books and articles that mention purity, there is no systematic analysis of purity. Here, we review all existing academic articles focused on purity in morality. We find that purity is an especially messy concept that lacks scientific validity. Because it is so poorly defined and inconsistently measured, it should not be invoked to explain our moral minds or political differences.

Serious Case Reviews and Extra-Familial Harm: Missed and Emerging Opportunities to Develop Contextual Practices

AbstractThe interpersonal harms that young people experience beyond their families have been documented internationally as have the challenges of protecting those effected using existing child welfare systems. Concern about this in the UK has led to development of ‘contextual’ child protection systems—capable of targeting the peer group, school and community contexts where extra-familial harm (EFH) occurs. This study examined whether reviews of serious incidents (serious case reviews (SCRs)) provide an evidence-base for understanding the contextual dynamics of EFH and/or developing contextual responses. SCRs (n = 49) from 2010–2020, where adolescents were harmed in extra-familial contexts, were analysed over two stages. Stage 1 involved thematic coding under four research questions. Using a framework analysis, Stage 1 themes were grouped around according to: contexts associated with EFH; the nature of social work responses and case review recommendations. Findings suggest that SCRs provide a limited account of the contextual dynamics of EFH. Whilst reviews illustrate that social work responses rarely address the contextual dynamics of EFH, many reviewers have neglected to focus on this shortfall when recommending service improvements. For case reviews to inform contextual child protection systems, information provided to review authors and the design of review requires adaptation.

The essence of arrogance: A phenomenology of musical egotism

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate how egotism was experienced in the lives of 15 musicians and music professionals. Participants representing a broad range of musical backgrounds shared accounts spanning teacher–student, conductor–performer, peer–peer, colleague–colleague, and internalized relations with arrogance. Data collection included one-on-one interviews, collaborative phenomenological texts, and hermeneutic reflections. Through the process of epoché, phenomenological reduction, and imaginative variation, four themes materialized: (a) self-preservation, (b) other-relegation, (c) elitism, and (d) interpersonal harms. The essence of the phenomenon surfaced as the social negotiation of power. Participants identified egotism as stemming from one’s efforts to (re)gain or preserve power as they worked to strip power away from others. Given pervasive feelings of powerlessness, worthlessness, and trauma among participants, I argue that a sense of urgency in addressing egotism within music scholarship is necessary—particularly in the interest of supporting humane and ethical musical relationships.

You people: Membership categorization and situated interactional othering in BigBank

AbstractThis paper offers an ethnomethodological membership categorization analysis (MCA) of an episode of argumentative talk in a bank, between a recent Indian migrant and her white British area manager. MCA examines how members use categorizations in the course of their everyday practical activities including workplace meetings. Our analysis shows how the “interactional trouble” between an employee and manager leads to the manager racially Othering the employee by invoking attributes resonant with what researchers call coloniality. Although theories of everyday racism and microaggression focus on everyday interactions, attention is not usually given to the moment‐by‐moment, turn‐by‐turn interactions and racial categorizations. In contrast, the MCA of our case study enables us to explicate the complexities of racializing and re‐colonizing work in specific organizational encounters. Racist interactions in organizations are complex, contestable, and draw on various shared categories, resources, and knowledges deployed to achieve situated institutional aims. In our in‐depth, close analysis of a relatively short interaction, we are able to reveal the institutional, gendered, racial, and colonial categories, and institutional and colonial devices that were made relevant; enabling us to explicate how racism works in the organizational every day. Studies of racist interactions stress there are specificities to the categories mobilized in organizational settings for example, parents, neighbors, race, and ethnicity and therefore the forms of racism produced. Our article contributes to studies of everyday racism in the workplace by showing the specific categories and devices―such as English, Indian, English Economy―mobilized turn‐by‐turn which led to a racially minoritized member of staff being interactionally Othered by the white manager in ways which not only does interpersonal harm but leads to her exclusion and dehumanization. We show how ethnomethodology and MCA are very useful, but somewhat neglected approaches, for learning about racism, coloniality, and gender in mundane, everyday workplace interactions.

Patterns of Childhood Adversities and Their Associations With Adult Victimization Among Incarcerated Men and Women in Spanish Prisons

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are prevalent and have long lasting effects. There is evidence of gender differences in exposure to different types of ACEs, with women experiencing higher levels of sexual abuse and cumulative adversity than men. Despite this, most research examining patterns of adversities have used joint samples, assuming that men and women have comparable profiles. The current study examines if distinct profiles of childhood adversities exist for men and women and analyzes their associations with multiple forms of interpersonal victimization during adulthood. Participants were 2,709 residents (91.6% men and 8.4% women) from eight prisons in Spain, who completed a self-administered survey. Latent Class Analysis revealed different patterns of childhood adversities for men and women. For both groups, higher adversity was associated with interpersonal harm during adulthood.