Jennifer Freyd

University of Oregon | UO · Department of Psychology

Objective: When an institution fails to fulfill its obligations to prevent violence from occurring or to respond adequately to violence, it commits institutional betrayal, which can compound a survivor’s distress. One proposed strategy to reduce the harm caused by institutional betrayal is institutional courage, which involves supportive and transp...

DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a response frequently exhibited by perpetrators of wrongdoing after being confronted or held accountable for their harmful behaviors. Consistent with the original conceptualization of DARVO as a strategy used by sex offenders to deflect blame and responsibility, sexual violence survivors report e...

Sexual violence is prevalent on college and university campuses, constituting one of the most urgent issues faced by institutions of higher education. Most students who have experienced sexual violence avoid seeking support from their institutions, despite the availability of resources. Institutional betrayal, which occurs when institutions betray...

DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) is a response exhibited by perpetrators to deflect blame and responsibility. When using DARVO, perpetrators deny their involvement in wrongdoing, attack their victims' credibility, and argue that they are the real victims. The purpose of this study was to measure the influence of DARVO and another m...

Despite efforts by universities to curb the spread of COVID-19, evidence from a separate, yet surprisingly parallel, domain of research – sexual violence perpetration – suggests that many students violate policies that regulate individual behavior and prohibit non-consensual physical contact. With the theoretical similarities between sexual violenc...

College women face high rates of sexual violence and rarely report their experiences to school officials. When victims do report, their cases infrequently result in their perpetrators’ expulsion. As such, many victims continue to attend school with their perpetrators. We are not aware of any academic research that has explored the experiences of th...

Research suggests that Internet pornography (IP) plays an important role in the lives of emerging adults, particularly when it comes to their attitudes and beliefs about sex. However, surprisingly little work has explicitly examined attitudes toward IP among this population. Even fewer studies have assessed the relationship between such attitudes a...

Individuals are dependent on institutions (e.g., universities, governments, healthcare systems) to protect their safety and advocate for their needs. When institutions harm the individuals who depend on them, they commit institutional betrayal, which has been associated with numerous negative outcomes in prior research. Throughout the COVID-19 pand...

The purpose of this manuscript is to examine the risk of sexual exploitation (both assault and harassment) associated with sorority and fraternity membership on U.S. college campuses. The results from this study come from data collected through an online survey. Participants (N=883) at a large Pacific Northwestern university provided information re...

Germinal studies have described the prevalence of sex-based harassment in high schools and its associations with adverse outcomes in adolescents. Studies have focused on students, with little attention given to the actions of high schools themselves. Though journalists responded to the #MeToo movement by reporting on schools’ betrayal of students w...

Germinal studies have described the prevalence of sex-based harassment in high schools and its associations with adverse outcomes in adolescents. Studies have focused on students, with little attention given to the actions of high schools themselves. Though journalists responded to the #MeToo movement by reporting on schools’ betrayal of students w...

Perpetrators of interpersonal violence sometimes use denial, engage in personal attacks on victim credibility, and assume a victimized role (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender; DARVO) to deflect blame. Two new experimental vignette studies were conducted to investigate DARVO. Experiment 1 (316 university students) aimed to assess the effects...

Purpose Although prior research has indicated that posttraumatic stress symptoms may result from sex-based harassment, limited research has targeted a key posttraumatic outcome – dissociation. Dissociation has been linked to experiences of betrayal trauma and institutional betrayal; sex-based harassment is very often a significant betrayal creating...

Attenuated awareness of betrayal, or “betrayal blindness,” is a proposed survival mechanism in relationships where awareness of betrayal will mobilize confront-or-withdraw responses that jeopardize a needed relationship. Empirical tests of betrayal blindness and its effects are hampered by the methodological conundrum of how to measure an absence o...

Research on institutional betrayal has found that institutional wrongdoing that fails to prevent or respond supportively to victims of abuse adds to the burden of trauma. In this two-study investigation with young adult university students, we demonstrated parallels between institutional betrayal and ways that families can fail to prevent or respon...

In a large random sample of undergraduate university students, we investigated whether sexual minority individuals (i.e., lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals) experienced different rates of sexual violence victimization (including sexual assault and rape) and subsequent institutional betrayal compared to their heterosexual counterparts, and whet...

Cultural betrayal trauma theory is a new framework for understanding trauma-related mental health outcomes in immigrant and minority populations. The purpose of the current study is to empirically test cultural betrayal trauma theory. We hypothesized that the association between within-group sexual violence and mental health outcomes would be stron...

Research on institutional betrayal has found that institutional wrongdoing that fails to prevent or respond supportively to victims of abuse adds to the burden of trauma. In this two-study investigation with young adult university students, we demonstrated parallels between institutional betrayal and ways that families can fail to prevent or respon...

Traumatic events in the field of psychology are most often conceptualized as life-threatening and anxiety-provoking experiences, but 20 years of research has demonstrated that social betrayal trauma can have even more devastating effects than life threat. This is very likely due to the fact that betrayal interferes with our ability to know reality...

Maternal history of childhood abuse has consistently been linked to increased risk for poor emotional adjustment and parenting as an adult. The aim of this study was to examine a model that may explain the link between maternal history of childhood abuse and mothers’ tendencies to respond negatively to their adolescent children's negative emotions....

The terms historical trauma and intergenerational transmission of trauma have been used interchangeably in the literature, yet may be theoretically distinct. The confusion in nomenclature may mask different underlying mechanisms for understanding trauma. The current study applies institutional betrayal trauma theory as a means for understanding awa...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine employees’ experiences of institutional betrayal after a campus sexual assault. Design/methodology/approach University employees completed online measures evaluating various attitudes toward the university. Findings The majority of participants reported institutional betrayal in the university’s...

Psychological trauma, particularly trauma involving betrayal, has been linked to health problems. Betrayal trauma is also characterized by dissociation and difficulty remembering as victims face conflicting demands presented by a harmful but important relationship. Institutional betrayal is related to, but distinct from, interpersonal betrayal and...

Perpetrators of violence often use a strategy of Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO) to confuse and silence their victims. Although some previous research has examined the individual elements of DARVO, this is the first study to directly examine DARVO as a unitary concept and to investigate how it relates to feelings of self-blame...

Though hallucinations traditionally have been conceptualized as a central feature of psychosis, some hallucinations may be dissociative, with dissociation potentially contributing to hallucinations. Childhood trauma has been linked with dissociation and hallucinations. Betrayal trauma theory distinguishes abusive experiences based on closeness to t...

Attenuated awareness of betrayal, or “betrayal blindness,” is a proposed survival mechanism in relationships where awareness of betrayal will mobilize confront-or-withdraw responses that jeopardize a needed relationship. Empirical tests of betrayal blindness and its effects are hampered by the methodological conundrum of how to measure an absence o...

An inability to identify betrayal may increase risk for victimization. Harm perpetrated by close others early in life may impair the ability to identify betrayal and develop trust. Dissociation may facilitate impaired betrayal awareness. The present study examined the impact of high betrayal trauma on state dissociation and betrayal awareness in a...

Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) are at an elevated risk of experiencing potentially traumatic events compared with the general population, particularly sexual abuse and assault (Brown & Pantalone, 2011; Rothman, Exner, & Baughman, 2011). Considering this trauma, in addition to the stress of discrimination (e.g., Marshal...

Brewin and Andrews present a strong case that the results of studies on adults' false memories for childhood events yield small and variable effects of questionable practical significance. We discuss some fundamental limitations of the literature available for this review, highlighting key issues in the operationalization of the term ‘false memory’...

Shame and dissociation cooccur in trauma survivors. Bypassed shame theory posits that dissociation reduces pain by interrupting shame. We tested this theory by inducing dissociation. The hypothesis that higher baseline shame would predict larger increases in dissociation following the induction was marginally supported. However, in contrast to bypa...

Betrayal traumas (Freyd, 1996), abuses that violate trust or dependency, predict numerous negative outcomes, including dissociation and revictimization (DePrince & Freyd, 2007; Gobin & Freyd, 2009; Goldsmith, Freyd, & DePrince, 2012). No previous empirical research examines the relation between betrayal and sexual health, including dissociation dur...

The Hoffman Report (Hoffman et al., 2015) documented devastating information about the American Psychological Association (APA) and the profession of psychology in the U.S., prompting a public apology and a formal commitment to right their wrongs (APA, 2015). In the current paper, we utilize betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1997), including betrayal...

This study is the first to expand the investigation of study-abroad risks to include a range of traumatic experiences for male and female students and to examine effects of institutional betrayal (i.e., an institution’s failure to prevent trauma or support survivors). In an online survey of 173 university students who had studied abroad, many respo...

We surveyed 525 graduate students (61.7% females and 38.3% males) regarding their exposure to sexual and gender-based harassing events. Thirty-eight percent of female and 23.4% of male participants self-reported that they had experienced sexual harassment from faculty or staff; 57.7% of female and 38.8% of male participants reported they had experi...

Gender-based sexual violence (GBSV) on college campuses has recently gained national attention in the United States. In April 2014, the White House recommended that institutions of higher education conduct campus climate surveys to assess GBSV; however, despite decades of research on this topic, concerns continue to be raised about the safety of as...

Betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1994, 1996) proposes that traumas high in social betrayal are expected to lead to psychological outcomes of dissociation, amnesia, and/or shame because these responses are adaptive to a survivor trying to preserve a necessary relationship in the face of mistreatment. Within the field of trauma studies more generally,...

Self-harm, which consists of nonsuicidal self-injury and attempted suicide, is a public health problem that is not well understood. There is conflicting evidence on the role of gender in predicting self-harm. Abuse history also is a potentially relevant factor to explore, as it is related to both gender and self-harm. In this study, we hypothesized...

Recent research suggests that betrayal is a fundamental dimension of trauma that may be a major factor contributing to posttraumatic distress (Freyd & Birrell, 2013). In the current study using a college student sample of female trauma survivors, (N = 124; 79% Caucasian; mean age = 20.40, SD = 3.60), we examined the contribution of high-and low-bet...

Research in both community and clinical settings has found that exposure to cumulative interpersonal trauma predicts substance use problems. Less is known about betrayal as a dimension of trauma exposure that predicts substance use, and about the behavioral and psychological pathways that explain the relation between trauma and substance use. In a...

A college freshman reports a sexual assault and is met with harassment and insensitive investigative practices leading to her suicide. Former grade school students, now grown, come forward to report childhood abuse perpetrated by clergy, coaches, and teachers-first in trickles and then in waves, exposing multiple perpetrators with decades of unfett...

Betrayal trauma theory proposes that one response to betrayal may be to keep knowledge of the trauma out of conscious awareness. Although this betrayal blindness may be beneficial for survival while the abuse is ongoing because it helps maintain crucial relationships, this distortion of reality can lead to subsequent psychological and behavioral pr...

At its foundation, Attachment Theory (AT; Bowlby, 1969) is a theory of developmental psychology that uses evolutionary and ethological frameworks to describe how the caregiver-child relationship emerges and how it influences subsequent social, emotional, and cognitive development. And while AT emerged out of observations of child-caregiver dynamics...

Betrayal trauma theory proposes that one response to betrayal may be to keep knowledge of the trauma out of conscious awareness. Although this betrayal blindness may be beneficial for survival while the abuse is ongoing because it helps maintain crucial relationships, this distortion of reality can lead to subsequent psychological and behavioral pr...

Early experiences of violation perpetrated by close others, or betrayal traumas, may interfere with developing social capacities, including the ability to make healthy decisions about whom to trust. Betrayal trauma theory posits that survivors of trauma are at increased risk of making inaccurate trust decisions in interpersonal contexts, thus inter...

Observers were shown a rectangle at three orientations along a possible path of rotation. They were instructed to remember the third orientation in the sequence and then were presented with a rectangle at a fourth orientation that was either the same as, or slightly different from, the third orientation. Each observer tested was more likely to acce...

Prior research indicates that survivors of abuse characterized by very close victim−perpetrator relationships (VC traumas) are significantly more likely to delay disclosure for 1 or more years, or never to disclose, than survivors of abuse characterized by not very close victim−perpetrator relationships (NVC traumas) (M. M. Foynes, J. J. Freyd, & A...

Research has documented the profound negative impact of betrayal within experiences of interpersonal trauma such as sexual assault (Freyd, 1994, 1996; Freyd, DePrince, & Gleaves, 2007). In the current study of college women (N = 345, 79% Caucasian; mean age = 19.69 years, SD = 2.55), we examined whether institutional failure to prevent sexual assau...

McCullough et al. hypothesize that evolution has selected mechanisms for revenge to deter harms and for forgiveness to preserve valuable relationships. However, in highly dependent relationships, the more adaptive course of action may be to remain unaware of the initial harm rather than risk alienating a needed other. We present a testable model of...

Individuals are sometimes exposed to information that may endanger their well-being. In such cases, forgetting or misremembering may be adaptive. Childhood abuse perpetrated by a caregiver is an example. Betrayal trauma theory (BTT) proposes that the way in which events are processed and remembered will be related to the degree to which a negative...

Eight-hundred thirty-three members of an ethnically diverse longitudinal cohort study in Hawaii were surveyed about their personal exposure to several types of traumatic events, socioeconomic resources, and mental health symptoms. Results replicated findings from prior research that while men and women are exposed to similar rates of trauma overall...

Recovery from stressful life experiences, including traumas, frequently involves telling others what happened. While it has been previously demonstrated that supportive responses to disclosures of such experiences are important predictors of positive outcome, less is known about the constituents of supportive responses. This exploratory study was m...

IntroductionThe basics of human memoryConclusions References

Objectives: To evaluate ethnic group differences in the association between trauma exposure and health status among an ethnically diverse sample originating in Hawai'i. Design: Across a 10-year period (1998-2008), participants (N=833) completed five waves of questionnaire assessments. Trauma exposure was measured retrospectively at the most rece...

Companion animals can serve as sources of love and attachment during times of stress. Stuffed animals, too, can provide comfort and stability. However, little research has examined companion animal attachment in highly dissociative trauma survivors, and no studies have systematically assessed stuffed animal attachment in dissociative adults. Colleg...

Betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 199617. Freyd , J. J. 1996. Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. View all references) postulates childhood abuse perpetrated by a caregiver or someone close to the victim results in worse mental health than abuse perpetrated by a noncaregiver. Using the Ad...

Betrayal trauma, or trauma perpetrated by someone with whom a victim is close, is strongly associated with a range of negative psychological and physical health outcomes. However, few studies have examined associations between different forms of trauma and emotional and physical symptoms. The present study compared betrayal trauma to other forms of...

Poor psychological outcomes are common among trauma survivors, yet not all survivors experience adverse sequelae. The current study examined links between cumulative trauma exposure as a function of the level of betrayal (measured by the relational closeness of the survivor and the perpetrator), trauma appraisals, gender, and trauma symptoms. Parti...

The purpose of the current study was to examine the role of betrayal trauma in explaining why women report higher rates of posttraumatic stress than men. Betrayal trauma theory posits that cognitive dissociation is adaptive when trauma occurs at the hands of a caregiver (Freyd, 1996). Betrayal trauma has also been linked to poorer outcomes in menta...

Good things have been happening to the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation (JTD). In this editorial, I first report on a number of these excellent developments. I also discuss one new concern for JTD-plagiarism in some submitted articles-that has come to light because of new detection methods. This consideration of intellectual integrity leads me to s...

Borderline Personality Disorder has been linked to both trauma and insecure attachment styles. Betrayal Trauma Theory proposes those who have experienced interpersonal trauma may remain unaware of betrayal in order to maintain a necessary attachment. This study attempts to replicate the association between self-reported betrayal trauma experiences...

Shame is a common, although understudied, reaction to trauma. It is associated with numerous negative outcomes after trauma including emotional distress and health problems. Using a mixed experimental and correlational design, this study explored the association between trauma exposure, negative underlying assumptions (NUAs; attitudes such as “If I...

The purpose of this study was to investigate intergenerational relationships between trauma and dissociation. Short and long term consequences of betrayal trauma (i.e., trauma perpetrated by someone with whom the victim is very close) on dissociation were examined in a sample of 67 mother–child dyads using group comparison and regression strategies...

Objective: Although disclosure of mistreatment can be beneficial, the effects of disclosure are largely contingent on the quality of responses received. An experimental design was used to evaluate a set of skills-training materials (STMs; Foynes & Freyd, 2010) designed to improve supportive responding to the disclosure of mistreatment experiences....

This study sought to examine teachers' perceptions of child maltreatment. Teachers (N = 66) responded to open-ended questions asking how physical and sexual abuse and emotional neglect affect student learning and classroom behavior in an online survey. Teachers reported that maltreatment outcomes manifest in academic difficulties, attention-deficit...

Introduction When judging the position of a moving object, human observers do not perceive and memorize the moving object's correct position. There are two known phenomena in judged position errors of a moving object, representational momentum (RM) and the flash-lag effect (FLE), both of which we consider here. RM was originally reported by Freyd a...

Childhood physical and sexual abuse are known risk factors for adult sexual aggression perpetration and victimization, but less is known about the role played by childhood emotional abuse. College sophomores were surveyed regarding their childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse victimization and their late-adolescent experiences of sexual ag...

Betrayal trauma theory (BTT) predicts that unawareness of abuse by someone on whom a victim is dependent may serve to protect a necessary relationship. Lindblom and Gray (2009) contribute to a growing line of BTT studies by measuring narrative detail in a sample of undergraduates who met Criterion A of the PTSD diagnosis and who rated the abuse as...

Attitudes and beliefs about sexual assault in general influence judgments about the veracity of specific sexual assault reports and disclosures (Taylor, 2007). The present study investigated the impact of gender, personal trauma history, and beliefs about gender and child sexual abuse (CSA) on judgments of the veracity of CSA disclosures. The study...