Symposia
Women's Issues
Erienne Cookson, B.A. (she/her/hers)
University of Windsor
LaSalle, Ontario, Canada
Patti T. Fritz, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Although gaslighting is considered as a form of psychological intimate partner violence (IPV) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Breiding et al., 2015), little empirical research has examined gaslighting specifically, and no known published study has examined gaslighting that occurs within sexual IPV relationships. The present study thus aimed to fill this gap by examining the role of gaslighting in sexual coercion that occurs in the context of intimate relationships —an understudied form of IPV—using an online qualitative survey created in Qualtrics. We collected and analyzed 74 narrative type-written responses to five questions regarding gaslighting from predominantly White (67.6%) Canadian undergraduate ciswomen (Mage = 22.2 years; age range = 18 to 51 years) who reported they had previously experienced an unwanted sexual experience (on the Sexual Experiences Survey—Short Form Victimization; Koss et al., 2007) using Braun and Clarke’s (2006, 2019) reflexive thematic analysis guidelines. We found that participants’ perceptions of gaslighting were similar to definitions and descriptions of gaslighting found in the literature, and that women’s perceptions were influenced by their own personal experiences. Survivors indicated that the gaslighting caused them to devalue their own self-worth, question their own reality and sense of self, experience a lack of power and control in their relationship with the perpetrator, and experience a wide range of negative emotions. Findings contribute to and align with IPV research and theory.