Trivia Junction

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School of hard knocks

No really, it's true

A life of hard knocks and painful lessons is supposed to make one tougher, more skeptical, nobody's fool. But a study by psychologists at the University of Leicester in England suggests that people who have suffered the most growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have led more sheltered lives.

After studying the lives of 60 volunteers, the researchers concluded that adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence (i.e. illness, being a victim of crime or bullying, family strife) tended to make people less trusting of their own judgment and more easily misled when they became adults.

“The majority of people may learn through repeated exposure to adversity to distrust their own judgment,” said Kim Drake, one of the study's authors. Confronted by conflicting information or someone else's strong opinion, such people often second-guess themselves and defer to others.

Conversely, early positive events in life appeared to create a protective effect, boosting psychological resilience, as did parents and other role models who displayed healthy coping skills.

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