Emotional invalidation: an integration with Agnew’s general strain theory

This paper integrates the concept of emotional invalidation into Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory (GST). It first discusses Agnew’s central argument in GST, which, most broadly, suggests that strenuous experiences can lead to negative emotions (e.g. anger). In turn, these negative emotions can lead to crime and other coping behaviors. This paper then describes emotional invalidation, which represents an overall sense that one’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are not being recognized by others in their world. From there, a new conceptual model combining both GST and emotional invalidation is proposed. Next, this paper explains how to best operationalize emotional invalidation by following a psychological measure known as the perceived invalidation of emotion scale. This paper concludes with an early assessment of the face validity of emotional invalidation, as well as some directions for future research. Collectively, the argument put forth suggests that emotional invalidation could provide valuable insight into several criminological inquiries, including why certain strains seem to influence crime for some but not others. Furthermore, it is argued that researchers can adopt this conceptual model to uncover strains that have not currently been considered, one of which I propose is gaslighting.