Personal worth, self-esteem, anomia, hostility and irrational thinking of abusing mothers: a multivariate approach

Eighteen mothers identified as the perpetrator of physical abuse of their children were matched with respect to race, income and educational level with control mothers of children in daycare centers. Tests included: The Sense of Personal Worth Scale of the California Test of Personality, the Srole Anomia Scale, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, three scales from the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory and the Rational Behavior Inventory (RBI). An overall MANOVA was performed on scores of the seven personality measures. Stepdown F-tests were conducted on scores of the seven test measures. With the RBI entered first, none of the subsequent variables was significant. Three variables (RBI, Negativism and Anomia) significantly discriminated between the abuse and control groups. Examination of the discriminant function coefficients revealed that the RBI was the most important contributing variable.