PERCEPTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE IN BRAZIL: THE ROLE OF SEXISM AND LOVE MYTHS
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Abstract
Psychological abuse is the most reported form of interpersonal violence by women around the world. However, this form of abuse is sometimes overlooked as harmful. Thus, this article aimed to analyze whether myths of romantic love and ambivalent sexism explained the perception of abuse, and five hypotheses were tested for this purpose. It was a quasi-experimental 2x2x2 study, where the type of psychological abuse (emotional abuse x control abuse), relationship status (married x dating), and romantic content of stories (romantic x non-romantic) were manipulated. A total of 214 students participated in the study, mostly female (54.7%), with an average age of 22.4 years (range 18 to 55 years). The SPSS software was used for data analysis, and multivariate, correlational, and descriptive analyses were performed. The results support one hypothesis and partially confirm three other hypotheses, which predicted that control abuse is more perceived than emotional abuse and that love myths are related to reduced perception of psychological abuse. Additionally, sexism moderated the relationship between the perception of psychological abuse and the types of abuse and romantic relationship. Thus, this article contributes to the understanding of violence perception, especially psychological abuse against women, illustrating how myths of love and sexism are related variables in explaining and understanding this phenomenon.
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Copyright (c). Conjuncture Bulletin (BOCA)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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