Análisis psicosocial de las nuevas formas de violencia de género

Abstract

Although information and communications technologies have led to numerous benefits in our lives to the point of improving them and being deemed indispensable, these technologies have also promoted new forms of violence against people. Chiefly among these forms of violence are practices such as online harassment in romantic relationships (OHRR), that is, the use of new technologies to abuse a former romantic partner. Research on OHRR is still considerably scarce, especially in Spain, because scholars had not studied this problem until relatively recently. In order to add to the scarce literature, the main goal of this dissertation is to analyze the relationship between the tolerance towards OHRR and three variables routinely considered in the literature on gender-based violence (GBV): ambivalent sexism, myths about romantic love, and myths about GBV. Ascertaining the relationship between these three variables as well as the sex-based differences in all of them constitute two other main goals of this dissertation To achieve these goals, 390 university students (M = 20.76; SD = 4.83) voluntarily completed an anonymous questionnaire specifically designed for the study. The analyses of the data revealed a positive and statistically significant correlation between OHRR and the other variables. These positive relationships indicate that people who hold tolerant attitudes towards this form of violence tend to have internalized ambivalent sexist beliefs myths about romantic love and about GBV, and vice versa. Furthermore, the analyses confirmed a positive and statistically significant correlation between ambivalent sexism and myths about romantic love, between ambivalent sexism and myths about GBV, and between these myths and those about romantic love. All these positive associations entail that people who hold ambivalent sexist beliefs tend to accept the myths about romantic love and those about GBV, and vice versa. Likewise, people who accept the myths about romantic love i tend to accept also those about GBV, and vice versa. Finally, with regard to sex-based variation, the male subjects showed higher tolerance of OHRR, stronger ambivalent sexist beliefs, and greater acceptance of the myths about romantic love and GVB than did the female subjects. These findings represent another step towards a better understanding of OHRR. However, efforts need to be redoubled to increase the knowledge about this phenomenon and its prevention. Moreover, given the social relevance of the issue and the results obtained in the study, it is recommended that these matters be addressed in academic training and prevention programs for university students. The dissertation concludes with some limitations as well as suggestions for future studies.