The Recognition of Emotional Abuse: Adolescents’ Responses to Warning Signs in Romantic Relationships

Abstract

Emotional abuse in relationships is widespread and can have serious detrimental effects on subsequent functioning. Despite this, and despite the knowledge that adolescents aged 16-19 are most likely to fall victim to abuse in romantic relationships when compared to older age groups, research surrounding warning signs of abuse and adolescents' responses to them has been lacking. This study explored adolescents' attitudes towards, and responses to, warning signs of emotional abuse. Males and females aged 16-19 (N = 171) from two high schools and one University completed a purpose-designed questionnaire containing 20 statements of warning sign behaviours. They then answered questions measuring perceived acceptability of

Relations among Romantic Myths, Offline Dating Violence Victimization and Cyber Dating Violence Victimization in Adolescents

“…Positive correlations among adolescents beliefs in romantic myths and both cyber-control and cyber-aggression victimization were also observed. These positive correlations could be related to previous findings indicating that many adolescents are not aware of some aggressive and control behaviors as forms of dating violence [50,52]. Some romantic beliefs, like considering control and jealousy by partners to be signs of their love or perceiving love as suffering, could make adolescent boys and girls perceive some cyber abuse behaviors as normal behaviors in romantic relationships [14].…”

“…Cyber-control victimization is also more frequent in adolescents than cyber-aggression victimization [11,22,49]. The closer relations between verbal-emotional offline DV victimization and cyber-control victimization herein observed could be linked with the higher prevalence of both types of teen DV victimization and their association with adolescents' lack of previous experience in romantic relationships [49,52,[62][63][64]. Adolescents initiate their first romantic relationships in this life stage, and lack experience in handling conflicts with partners and how to express their emotions to them.…”

“…These romantic myths can also influence adolescents' acceptance of some abusive behavior performed by romantic partners. Not recognizing some abuse behaviors increases the probably of suffering victimization because victims are not fully aware of abusive behaviors [52]. Adolescents' beliefs in romantic myths could make them believe that certain abusive, controlling and jealous behaviors are signs of love and are normal behaviors in a romantic relationship [39,41,42,47,53].…”

The Impact of Contemporary Communication Technology on Undergraduate Students’ Dating Violence Episodes: An Exploration of Routine Activity Theory

“…This explained why CDA was prevalent among the respondents. This is in agreement with the assertion by Francis and Pearson (2019) that the failure by young people to recognize abusive behaviours increased their chance of being victims of dating abuse. This was compounded by the fact that even in Kenyatta University which had a social media policy in place, majority of the respondents generally lacked awareness of its existence.…”

Cyber and Offline Dating Abuse in a Portuguese Sample: Prevalence and Context of Abuse

“…The increase in control CDA, when compared to CDA direct aggression, may be explained by the fact that it is a cyber abuse typology that includes abusive behaviours (e.g., persistent messaging or partner surveillance), being less explicit and therefore more acceptable by young people. It is also perceived as a sign of love or jealousy, as reported by Francis and Pearson [ 54 ]. In the analysis of the context in which the CDA may occur, jealousy was identified by this study participants as the most prevalent context of CDA (54.9%), corroborating what was reported by Borrajo et al [ 12 ].…”