Member Article

'School of hard knocks' a myth

People who have suffered life’s hard knocks while growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have been more sheltered, reveals research from the University of Leicester. Rather than ‘toughening up’ individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence meant that these people were vulnerable to being mislead. Such people were more open to suggestion in police interrogations or to be influenced by the media or advertising campaigns. Kim Drake, a doctoral student at the University of Leicester who conducted the research, said: “People who have experienced an adverse childhood and adolescence are more likely to come to believe information that isn’t true - in short they are more suggestible, and easily mislead which may in turn impact upon their future life choices; they might succumb to peer pressure more readily.” “The majority of people may learn through repeated exposure to adversity to distrust their own judgment; a person might believe something to be true, but when they, for example, read something in a newspaper that contradicts their opinion, or they talk to someone with a different view-point, that individual is more likely to take on that other person’s view. “This is because the person may have learned to distrust their actions, judgements and decisions due to the fact that the majority of the time their actions have been perceived to invite negative consequences.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .