Gaslighting, long recognized as a damaging form of psychological abuse and manipulation, typically involves one person systematically casting doubt on another’s sense of reality, memories, and emotions. While the concept was first identified decades ago, widespread public interest and empirical research into the phenomenon are relatively recent. Today, the scientific study of gaslighting is expanding rapidly. Psychologists and other researchers have pointed out that gaslighting frequently occurs in relationships characterized by an imbalance in power, with the more powerful partner typically gaslighting the less powerful one.
Historically, gaslighting has primarily been studied in relationships consisting of two adults, most commonly within romantic partnerships or workplace dynamics between leaders and employees. However, one of the most foundational close relationships in any individual’s life is the bond between a parent and a child. During childhood, this relationship is inherently defined by an immense and unavoidable imbalance in power. Because of this dynamic, parent-child relationships have been identified as an important and compelling context for studying gaslighting. Yet, despite its theoretical significance, empirical research on gaslighting within families remains surprisingly sparse.
Part of the reason why parent-child relationships have been relatively neglected in the academic literature on gaslighting is that they present unique methodological challenges, making them an especially difficult type of abusive dynamic to study. Fortunately, a group of researchers led by Xi Li at Shanghai Normal University took on the challenge. They noted that in Chinese culture, parent-child relationships are deeply embedded in a broader cultural system that prioritizes moral order, filial piety, and strict parental authority. These deeply ingrained cultural norms may make parent-child gaslighting more socially acceptable or less readily identified in China.
In their investigation, Li and colleagues highlighted a core mechanism of gaslighting: alongside questioning a target’s memories, emotions, and understanding of reality, gasmitters often influence their targets to blame themselves for problems within the interpersonal relationship. This specific dimension of gaslighting—where the target comes to believe they are the primary cause of unpleasant social interactions—was thoroughly examined in Theodore Dorpat’s foundational 1996 book on the subject. Furthermore, several previous studies have linked the experience of gaslighting to depressive symptoms. Based on this background, Li and colleagues hypothesized that part of the reason why gaslighting leads to depression is because it causes targets to attribute the root cause of tense interpersonal interactions to their own behavior rather than to the behavior of the gaslighter.
To test this hypothesis within the context of Chinese parent-child relationships, the research team first had to adapt an established measure of gaslighting for a sample of adolescents. They selected the Gaslighting Relationship Exposure Inventory (GREI), which was originally developed by Tager-Shafrir and colleagues. The researchers translated the inventory into Chinese and conducted rigorous psychometric testing to ensure that the translated scale possessed acceptable properties for measuring the construct reliably in their target demographic.
Following the validation of the translated inventory, Li and colleagues designed a longitudinal study to test their core idea: that gaslighting leads Chinese adolescents to attribute the responsibility for relationship difficulties to their own behavior, which subsequently leads to higher levels of depression. They surveyed 606 Chinese adolescents who responded to the newly developed Chinese version of the Gaslighting Relationship Exposure Inventory, alongside standardized measures designed to capture internal attribution of responsibility and depressive symptoms.
As the researchers expected, the data revealed that gaslighting did indeed lead to more self-blame regarding difficulties in the parent-child relationship. This finding marks an important milestone, representing the first study to empirically demonstrate a direct relationship between gaslighting and the internal attribution of responsibility. However, in contrast to their initial hypothesis, the researchers did not find that this self-blame led to a statistically significant increase in depression. Even more surprisingly, the study did not find that gaslighting itself led to a statistically significant overall increase in the level of depressive symptoms among the participants.
A closer examination of the study reveals that the authors’ reporting of their statistical results can be somewhat confusing to interpret. In their paper, the researchers write that internal attribution of responsibility functioned as a modest longitudinal mediator in the prediction of adolescent depressive symptoms by parental gaslighting. In psychological research, scientists typically rely on a metric known as a p-value to determine whether their observed results pass a conventional threshold of statistical significance. By standard convention, a p-value of less than .05 is required, meaning that if the hypothesized relationship between two variables did not actually exist in the broader population, the probability of obtaining the observed result purely by chance is less than five percent.
While the data collected by Li and colleagues clearly demonstrate that gaslighting leads to heightened self-blame, and that both gaslighting and self-blame exhibit positive directional trends toward depression, the direct relationship between gaslighting and depression fell short of this strict statistical threshold, carrying greater than a five percent probability of being a chance finding under the null hypothesis. Similarly, the mediated effect—representing the proportion of the impact of gaslighting on depression that operates through self-blame—also carried a greater than five percent probability of occurring by chance. Consequently, most traditional psychological scientists would conclude that the authors’ primary hypothesis regarding depression was not definitively confirmed by this specific dataset.
Despite the complexities and limitations surrounding the reporting of the depression-related results, the study possesses substantial strengths and represents a valuable contribution to the field. Most notably, it stands out as one of the very first empirical investigations to examine gaslighting within parent-child relationships, a feat made more impressive by the rigorous effort required to cross-validate the gaslighting measure for a Chinese sample. Additionally, by providing the first empirical link between gaslighting experiences and the internal attribution of relationship difficulties, the study opens new avenues for understanding the cognitive toll of manipulation within families.
Researchers emphasize that no single scientific study is ever entirely conclusive on its own. Therefore, while this particular investigation did not find that parental gaslighting led to a statistically significant increase in depressive symptoms within this specific cohort, that outcome does not imply that gaslighting never leads to depression or psychological distress in other contexts, age groups, or cultural settings. The findings highlight the need for continued empirical research into how power imbalances and psychological manipulation manifest across diverse family structures and cultural frameworks.
