Summary by Jennifer Pink & Nicola S. Gray
Cyber dating abuse (Borrajo et al., 2015) refers to a range of aggressive online behaviours, directed towards a partner. These include posting humiliating or intimate material on social networks, snooping on personal communications, and sending threatening or controlling messages. Experiencing cyber dating abuse can lead to depression, anxiety, and self-harm (Branson & March, 2021). As such, it is crucial to understand which emotions and personality traits predict these behaviours so that cyber dating abuse can be managed or prevented.
Cyber dating abuse is considered a form of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), both marked by aggression, control, and hostility (Branson & March, 2021). Evolutionary psychologists propose that IPV has evolved to ensure mate retention for the purpose of reproduction; if there is a perceived threat from another potential mate, feelings of jealousy arise, leading to controlling and aggressive behaviours (Branson & March, 2021).
Jealousy in relationships is highly related to psychopathy, as shown by Massar et al. (2017). In that study, the affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy, marked by manipulation and a lack of empathy, were associated with experiencing jealousy and inducing jealousy in relationships to obtain power and gain revenge. The lifestyle and antisocial traits of psychopathy, reflecting impulsivity and risky behaviours, were predictive of experiencing emotional and suspicious jealousy, and inducing jealousy to test a relationship. Along with narcissism and hostility, jealousy has been shown to predict cyber dating abuse (Deans & Bhogal, 2017), while psychopathy has been associated with intimate partner cyber-stalking (March et al., 2020).
Drawing these previous findings together, this study explored how predictive jealousy, narcissism, hostility, and psychopathy were of cyber dating abuse.
What they did…
A large sample of 817 participants (predominantly female and heterosexual), mostly from Australia, the US and the UK, completed a range of personality and behaviour questionnaires online. Psychopathic traits were measured using the 64-item Self-Report Psychopathy Scale III (SRP-III; Paulhus et al., in press) questionnaire. This measure consists of four subscales: interpersonal manipulation, callous affect, erratic lifestyle, and anti-social behaviour. Together the first two subscales measure traits of the affective and interpersonal features of psychopathy (often called Factor 1), while the latter two subscales measure the antisocial lifestyle features of psychopathy (often called Factor 2). The other questionnaires indexed jealousy (cognitive, emotional, and behavioural), hostility, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Participants also completed the Cyber Dating Abuse Questionnaire (CDAQ; Borrajo et al., 2015) which asked about online abusive behaviours that they had engaged in over the past 12 months.
Branson and March (2021) entered the data into statistical models which assessed which of the different traits of psychopathy, jealousy, hostility, and narcissism predicted cyber dating abuse behaviours.
What they found…
All the traits measured, including psychopathy, were significantly associated with cyber dating abuse behaviours. Jealousy was the most significant predictor of cyber dating abuse, with vulnerable narcissism and the antisocial lifestyle features also being significant predictors of these controlling and aggressive online behaviours. Additionally, these antisocial lifestyle traits mediated the relationship between hostility and cyber dating abuse. Interestingly, and contrasting with both the hypotheses of the authors and related findings of Massar et al. (2017), the affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy were not found to uniquely predict cyber dating abuse in this study. (In other words, the Factor 1 traits were no longer predictive of cyber dating abuse once the Factor 2 traits were considered as predictors in the model.) The authors suggested this may be due to aspects of cyber dating abuse relating to emotive and impulsive reactions.
The authors also explored any gender differences. While women scored more highly in hostility and vulnerable narcissism, men were higher in psychopathic traits, jealousy, and grandiose narcissism. There were no gender differences in cyber dating abuse scores.
Why this is important for you…
This study adds to the existing evidence that psychopathy plays a role in online abusive dating behaviours (Massar et al., 2017). It also underlines the substantial contribution to cyber dating abuse of jealousy, which is highly associated with both of the broad dimensions of psychopathy (Massar et al., 2017), and confirms that narcissism is a further predictor of these kinds of abusive behaviours. Moreover, it suggests that cyber dating abuse is carried out in equal levels by men and women.
Cyber dating abuse is highly related to IPV, and the authors forecast that, as we increasingly use digital technologies to communicate, the incidence of cyber dating abuse is likely to rise. Therefore, this is an area needing further research to both manage and prevent cyber dating abuse, given the devastating consequences of such abusive online behaviours.
Article
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, 106711.
References
Borrajo, E., Gámez-Guadix, M., Pereda, N., & Calvete, E. (2015). The development and validation of the cyber dating abuse questionnaire among young couples. Computers in human behavior, 48, 358-365.
Deans, H., & Bhogal, M. S. (2019). Perpetrating cyber dating abuse: A brief report on the role of aggression, romantic jealousy and gender. Current Psychology, 38(5), 1077-1082.
March, E., Litten, V., Sullivan, D. H., & Ward, L. (2020). Somebody that I (used to) know: Gender and dimensions of dark personality traits as predictors of intimate partner cyberstalking. Personality and Individual Differences, 163, 110084.
Massar, K., Winters, C. L., Lenz, S., & Jonason, P. K. (2017). Green-eyed snakes: The associations between psychopathy, jealousy, and jealousy induction. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 164-168.
Paulhus, D. L., Neumann, C. S., & Hare, R. D. (in press). Manual for the Hare Self-Report Psychopathy scale. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Multi-Health Systems.
