Antecedents and consequences of gaslighting
Theme: Well-being in social and societal contexts
Type of research: quantitative empirical
Description:
Recent years have witnessed an increasing public and academic concern about the effects of so-called “gaslighting”. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation, aimed at inducing doubt in a target’s trust in their own knowing abilities and understanding of reality. Although also applicable to institutional and social media contexts, gaslighting has been most frequently studied in the context of intimate relationships. Much of the research on gaslighting is focussed on more extreme cases of gaslighting as experienced and reported by victims, although gaslighting may also occur more widely and in more subtle levels. Also, directly measuring people’s own gaslighting behaviours by means of self-report is obviously problematic and likely biased.
March et al. (2023) recently developed a 10-item questionnaire to assess respondents’ acceptance of gaslighting tactics in intimate relationships. As this questionnaire indirectly measures people’s generic attitudes toward different gaslighting tactics, it may provide additional and meaningful insight into gaslighting and its correlates in general populations.
In this project you will, together with three other students, conduct a cross-sectional online survey study that includes this new measure of gaslighting acceptance. The aim is to include a socio-demographically diverse sample of between 100-200 adult respondents. The overall objective of the project is to explore the level of acceptance of gaslighting tactics in intimate relationships and its association with people’s background characteristics and other psychological variables. You are free to select and focus on different variables of your own interest to include in the survey. Research questions can focus on different assumed predictors and consequences of gaslighting acceptance, mediators and moderators of the association between gaslighting and psychological variables, etc..
March, E., Kay, C. S., Dinić, B. M., Wagstaff, D., Grabovac, B., & Jonason, P. K. (2023). “It’s All in Your Head”: Personality Traits and Gaslighting Tactics in Intimate Relationships. Journal of Family Violence. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-023-00582-y