Synergy between Acceptance of Violence and Sexist Attitudes as a Dating Violence Risk Factor.

Inmaculada Fernández-Antelo,Guadalupe Martín-Mora Parra,Isabel Cuadrado-Gordillo

doi:10.3390/ijerph17145209

Inmaculada Fernández-Antelo, Guadalupe Martín-Mora Parra + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17145209

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Abstract

The normalization of aggressive behavior in teenage couples when they are dating is a phenomenon that is currently reaching very worrying proportions. The consequences are creating a serious public health problem and have hence aroused the interest of many researchers as to its causes. Most have centered on the role of the aggressor. However, the processes of aggression and victimization are inseparable, and relegating the victims to the background only contributes to increasing the prevalence, severity, and perdurability of the problem. The objectives of this study were to: (i) identify the types and frequency of abuse that adolescents suffer in their relationships; (ii) analyze the relationship between sexist attitudes, acceptance of violence, and victimization; and (iii) determine predictors of the violence suffered in adolescent dating relationships. The sample comprised 2577 adolescents (55.2% girls) of 14 to 18 years in age (M = 15.9, SD = 1.2). The instruments used were the dating violence questionnaire (Cuestionario de Violencia de Novios, CUVINO) and the Scale of detection of sexism in adolescents (Escala de Detección de Sexismo en Adolescentes, DSA). The results indicate that victims showed high tolerance towards gender violence. Acceptance was greater the more frequent the abuse or aggressions suffered. Regarding sexist attitudes, only those belonging to the benevolent dimension had predictive value. The results also show that the interaction between acceptance of the abuse suffered and the manifestation of benevolent sexist attitudes predicted victimization involving specific forms of aggression.

Highlights

Violence in teenage couples when they are dating is a complex and multi-causal phenomenon.It is generating wide concern in society because of the negative consequences it has on adolescents’psychosocial development, on a distorted self-perception of healthy romantic relationships between boys and girls, and on their beginning and maintaining future romantic and intimate relationships when they become adults
When the interaction between acceptance of physical abuse and benevolent sexism occurs on the victimization of physical abuse, the results indicate that greater acceptance increases the possibility of suffering physical abuse for adolescents with a high level of benevolent sexism (t = 3.89, p < 0.01)
In the case of adolescents, this phenomenon has been widely studied when such violence is between peers, but there still remains many questions to resolve when that abuse occurs between the members of a couple who are dating

Summary

Introduction

Violence in teenage couples when they are dating is a complex and multi-causal phenomenon.It is generating wide concern in society because of the negative consequences it has on adolescents’psychosocial development, on a distorted self-perception of healthy romantic relationships between boys and girls, and on their beginning and maintaining future romantic and intimate relationships when they become adults. Violence in teenage couples when they are dating is a complex and multi-causal phenomenon. Access to erotic and pornographic videos, without any type of screening, leads some adolescents to take these as referents for the maintenance of their first sexual relations [3,4]. In both girls and boys, copying patriarchal systems and patterns of behavior as well as sexist and discriminatory attitudes towards women [5] is worrying, as is the false empowerment of women [6]. The perdurability and strengthening of these risk factors causes the victims, mostly girls, to experience a long history of poly-victimization and re-victimization [7]

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