The effect of university students' childhood traumatic experiences on self-perception and submissive behaviors

The study was conducted to examine the effect of university students? childhood traumatic experiences on self-perception and submissive behaviors. In this study, childhood traumatic experiences were also examined in terms of gender and birth order. The research group of the study composed of 688 students attending at the different department of Fatih Education Faculty at the Karadeniz Technical University. The participants were applied ?Childhood Trauma Questionnaire? adapted by Aslan and Alparslan (1999), ?Social Comparison Scale? and ?Submissive Acts Scale? adapted by Şahin and Şahin (1992). In addition, to define demographical characteristics of students, ?Personal Questionnarie? which was prepared by the researcher was also used. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Techniques, Multiple Regression, independent t-test and One Way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. It has been determined that self-perception have a significant relationship in negative and submissive behaviors have a significant relationship in positive with all childhood abuse types (emotional, physical and sexual abuse). Furthermore, childhood abuse experiences predicts meaningfully the self-perception and submissive behaviors. The results of this study show that childhood abuse experiences except sexual abuse differ to their gender. All this results are discussed in the light of relevant literature and some new directions are given to the further studies.Key words: Childhood Traumatic Experience Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Neglect, Self-Perception, Submissive Behaviors.