Summary by Jennifer Pink and Dr. Nicola Gray
Posting humiliating or intimate material involving a partner, snooping on their personal communications and sending them threatening messages are all forms of Cyber Dating Abuse. As the psychological ramifications of cyber dating abuse are substantial, researchers are working to understand the emotional responses and personality traits associated with engaging in these egregious behaviours.
Branson and March (2021) explored several known factors associated with cyber dating abuse and intimate partner cyber-stalking to see which are most predictive of cyber dating abuse. With an online sample of participants, they measured both the affective and interpersonal features of psychopathy (e.g., manipulation and lack of empathy) and the antisocial lifestyle features of psychopathy (associated with impulsivity and risky behaviours), as well as narcissism, hostility and jealousy. They also assessed the level of cyber dating abuse behaviours that the participants had engaged in over the previous 12 months.
Jealousy was the most significant predictor of CDA, with vulnerable narcissism and the antisocial lifestyle features of psychopathy also being significant predictors of these controlling and aggressive online behaviours. While the affective and interpersonal features of psychopathy were not a unique predictor of cyber dating abuse, both forms of psychopathy are associated with experiencing and inducing jealousy (Massar et al., 2017), the primary predictor of cyber dating abuse in this research.
This study reiterates the role that psychopathy plays in online abusive dating behaviours (Massar et al., 2017). It also underlines the substantial contribution to cyber dating abuse of jealousy, highly associated with both broad dimensions of psychopathy (Massar et al., 2017), and confirms that narcissism is a further predictor of these kinds of abusive behaviours. It also provides evidence that cyber dating abuse is carried out in equal levels by men and women. A more in-depth summary of the study is available on the Aftermath Foundation Members page here.
The Study:
Branson, M., & March, E. (2021). Dangerous dating in the digital age: Jealousy, hostility, narcissism, and psychopathy as predictors of Cyber Dating Abuse. Computers in Human Behavior, 119, Article 106711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106711
