'Struggles make people gullible'

Struggle while growing up leads to a rewarding adult life - that is the conventional wisdom.

Struggle while growing up leads to a rewarding adult life - that is the conventional wisdom.

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But new research says that such people tend to be more gullible than those who have a sheltered early life.

Experts at the University of Leicester's School of Psychology found that rather than "toughening up" individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence meant that these people were vulnerable to being mislead.

The research analysing results from 60 participants hints that such people could, for example, be more open to suggestion in police interrogations or to be influenced by the media or advertising campaigns.

The study found that while some people may indeed become more "hard-nosed" through adversity, the majority become less trusting of their own judgement.

Kim Drake, a doctoral student at the University of Leicester, conducted the research with Professor Ray Bull and Dr Julian Boon of the School of Psychology.

Drake 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 study found that nearly 70 per cent of the variation across people in suggestibility could be explained by the different levels of negative life events that they had experienced.

"We also found that the way people cope with adversity had an impact on their psychological profile," said Kim.

"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 viewpoint, 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.

"Another example is in relationships. Women, as well as men, can become 'brainwashed', and end up changing in their personality, their views and beliefs and in some extreme cases, they may even take on their views and ideas of the world and come to feel incompetent (in their partner's eyes)."

Drake added that there was already evidence to suggest that there was a relationship between intensity/frequency of negative life impacts and degree of vulnerability.