Date of Award

2012

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Doane, Lisa Stines

Subject Headings

Wounds and injuries, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Risk-taking (Psychology), Trauma, high-risk behaviors, PTSD

Abstract

Many previous studies have shown that trauma survivors, with and without Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), engage in more high-risk behaviors (e.g., Smith, Davis, & Fricker-Elhai, 2004). It is unclear whether the trauma exposure itself, or PTSD, is actually associated with the high-risk behaviors. The current study will be one of the first to examine differences in risk-taking between trauma survivors with and without PTSD, and will utilize the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) to test risk-taking propensity in trauma survivors. We expect that trauma survivors with PTSD will engage in more high-risk behaviors, report greater perceived benefits, and demonstrate greater risk-taking propensity than trauma survivors without PTSD. The results of this study were not in support of our hypotheses that those with PTSD would report more overall risk-taking, have higher risk-propensity, or report relatively more expected benefits from high-risk behaviors

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