(PS14-42) Psychological and Environmental Correlates of Locus of Control and Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms: A Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract Text:

Introduction: Early-life stress has been linked to the development of various psychopathology-related outcomes, including post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Heterogeneity in the severity, treatment efficacy, and longitudinal course of PTSS has impeded progress in preventing and treating this disorder. To address this issue, researchers have begun to identify potential subtypes of PTSS, based on a range of clinical, behavioral, and personality indicators. Locus of control (LOC) refers to individual expectations regarding one’s perceived controllability over the occurrences in their life, and is one factor thought to be critical to the onset, maintenance, and treatment of PTSS. Using two different samples of young adults, the current study leveraged latent profile analysis (LPA) to parse heterogeneity in the associations between LOC and PTSS and to identify associated early environmental and psychological factors.
Hypotheses: We hypothesized that multiple PTSS/LOC profile subgroups could be differentiated, and that cumulative early-life stress exposure, perceived uncontrollability during early-life stress, and developmental timing of early-life stress would differ between PTSS/LOC subgroups.

Methods: Young adults across two different samples (N = 164 and N = 665, respectively) completed self-reported measures of ELS, LOC, and PTSS. We examined: 1) the best-fitting latent profile solution in categorizing participants based on PTSS severity and LOC orientation using LPA, and 2) the dimensions of early-life stress that best predicted class membership using multinomial logistic regression.

Results: The LPA identified 5 latent subgroups of participants based on LOC and PTSS scores that replicated across two samples: Balanced LOC/High PTSS, Internal LOC/Low PTSS, External LOC/High PTSS, External LOC/Low PTSS, and Balanced LOC/Low PTSS. Greater cumulative early-life stress, perceived uncontrollability during early-life stress, and higher early-life stress during adolescence emerged as being predictive of membership in the External LOC/Low PTSS class.

Conclusions: The current findings suggest that coherence between event- and global-level perceptions of controllability during specific developmental periods may be associated with risk for PTSS.
Implications: The current findings lend support to the potential therapeutic impact of identifying and addressing perceptions of control, at both the event- and global-levels, on trauma-related symptoms. More so, our findings indicate that some individuals may display both an external LOC and lower PTSS following high exposure to early-life stress. While an external LOC has often been viewed as an impediment to recovery following trauma exposure, our results highlight a potentially more nuanced consideration of the role of external LOC in treatment.