Implicit Assessment of Self-Injury Related Outcome Expectancies: A Comparison of Three behavioural Tasks

Abstract

According to Social Cognitive Theory, the anticipated consequences of a behaviour (outcome expectancies), influence the likelihood of engaging in a behaviour. Results from self-report studies suggest that people who have self-injured expect self-injury will regulate emotions while people who have never self-injured expect self-injury to result in pain. In this study we trialled three experimental tasks measuring implicit self-injury related outcome expectancies. 150 Australian university students aged 18–45 ( M = 21.45, SD = 3.84) completed the experimental tasks (Sentence Completion Task, Implicit Association Tests, Covariation Bias Task) within a laboratory setting. Results revealed that implicit associations with affect regulation, pain, and communication differentiated people according to self-injury history in the sentence completion task. The strength of implicit associations with affect regulation also predicted the recency of self-injury. People who had self-injured, but not in the past 12 months appeared to have a bias towards associating images of self-injury and neutral words when compared to people who had recently self-injured. Implicit associations, as measured by the Implicit Association Tests did not significantly differentiate participants by self-injury history. Results suggest that the sentence completion task could further research and theoretical understanding of the role of implicit outcome expectancies in facilitating self-injury.