Survivors of trauma often show impairment in several aspects of daily life, including in their socio-cognitive functioning. Prior research has found people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) associated with childhood trauma often show changes in theory of mind and empathic responding. Alterations in these areas often leads to relationship issues and lower life satisfaction in adulthood. Another expected outcome of these impairments in social cognition would be differences in a traumatized individual's moral reasoning. In fact, early evidence suggests that relative to controls, women with PTSD from childhood abuse display changes in moral judgment. The present study (currently in data collection) aims to extend this research by examining the relationship between different factors of trauma (type, chronicity) and moral judgment in everyday scenarios. Participants will take a self-report measure assessing early life trauma experienced (e.g., physical abuse). They will then be given a set of everyday moral dilemmas (e.g., "I am at the checkout and owe $8 for my groceries. I give $10 to the cashier. She gives me back $4 instead of $2.") followed with the question, "What do I do?" and given two choices ("give the money back or keep the money"). Given the deficits in socio-cognitive processes that are key to moral reasoning seen in PTSD from childhood abuse, we hypothesize that compared to healthy controls, individuals who experienced chronic childhood trauma (e.g., neglect) will show alterations in everyday moral reasoning, evidenced by less utilitarian judgments.
