Identification of five fundamental implicit theories underlying cognitive distortions in child abusers: A preliminary study

By V. Marziano, Tony Ward, A. Beech, P. Pattison. 2006

118 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Qualitative analysis of interviews with 22 child abusers found strong evidence for Ward and Keenan's (1999) proposal that there are five implicit theories in child abusers that account for the majority of their cognitive distortions/thinking errors. These implicit theories are: Child as a sexual being where children are perceived as being able to and wanting to engage in sexual activity with adults and also are not be harmed by such sexual contact; Nature of harm where the offender perceives that sexual activity does not cause harm (and may in fact be beneficial) to the child; Entitlement where the child abuser perceives that he is superior and more important than others: and hence is able to have sex with whoever, and whenever, he wants; Dangerous world where the offender perceives that that others are abusive and rejecting and he must fight to regain control; and Uncontrollable where the offender perceives the world as uncontrollable and hence he believes that circumstances are outside of his control. There was no evidence for any other type of implicit theory. Results of the study also indicated that there was a significant difference in terms of the endorsement of the Dangerous world implicit theory between participants reporting a history of child sexual abuse and those who did not. Offenders against male victims were significantly more likely to endorse the Child as a sexual being and Dangerous world implicit theories compared to men who had offended against female children.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a033618948b29e12c83a369045bfd0e0bc78bf30

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. A. Beech
2. Tony Ward
3. Dawn L. Fisher
4. Theresa A. Gannon
5. Jan Looman
6. J. Abracen
7. G. Willis
8. F. McNeill

In Social Psychology

1. A. Beech
2. Tony Ward

Citations in the corpus

• Assessing female sexual offenders’ motivations and cognitions: an exploratory study (2009, background): “On a final note, it should also be noted that there is starting to be a wider research base about the nature of ITs in: male child sexual abusers (Marziano et al., 2006; Mihailides, Devilly, & Ward 2004); rapists (Beech, Ward, & Fisher, 2006; Polaschek & Gannon, 2004); and sexual murderers (Beech,…”