Predicting College Women’s Self-esteem Based on Verbal Coercion Experience and Verbal Tactic Items on the Revised Sexual Experiences Survey

Verbal coercion experience is common among college women and has sometimes been associated with lower self-esteem. The current study examined self-esteem based on the two verbal coercion items included in the latest version of the most popular measure of sexual victimization experience, the Sexual Experiences Survey-Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV; Koss et al., 2007 ). One item includes verbal tactics categorized as “threat” and the other item includes verbal tactics categorized as “criticism.” Undergraduate women ( n = 479) completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the SES-SFV. Results showed that women who experienced criticism reported lower self-esteem than those who did not experience criticism. However, threat experience was not significantly related to women’s self-esteem. Findings support Koss et al.’s suggestion that criticism tactics are more negative than threat tactics, and imply that self-esteem may be negatively associated with some sexually coercive verbal tactics but not associated with others. Future researchers should pay careful attention to operational definitions of verbal coercion.

Co-Rumination May Mitigate Depressive and Anxious Symptoms for Those High in Social Interaction Anxiety

Introduction: Early co-rumination research has demonstrated that engagement in co-rumination, or persistent discussion of one's problems at length, can lead to increased depressive and anxious symptoms. There is limited research examining the direct relationship between a specialized type of anxiety—social interaction anxiety—and co-rumination, and that research has conflicting results, making it unclear what the relationship between the two is. The purpose of the present study was to further examine the relationship between co-rumination and social interaction anxiety, depressive symptoms, and symptoms of anxiety. Method: Ninety-six college women and men completed online questionnaires twice, separated by one month. Results: We found that co-rumination at Time 1 negatively predicted social interaction anxiety at Time 2. We also found co-rumination predicted reduced depressive symptoms, but only among those who had moderate and high levels of social interaction anxiety. In that respect, our findings replicate van Zalk and Tillfors (2017), who found that co-rumination acts as a buffer against depressive symptoms for individuals high in social anxiety. Our study also offers an extension of van Zalk and Tillfors in that the same pattern was found for anxious symptoms, but only among those with the highest levels of social interaction anxiety. Discussion: Therefore, co-rumination for highly socially-anxious individuals may serve as a form of positive social support, which highlights important individual differences on internalizing symptoms.