Российский психологический журнал (Jun 2019)
Interrelations of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Psychological Gender with Victimization
Abstract
Introduction. Victimization is the process and the result of a subject’s transformation into a victim of criminal assault. This widespread phenomenon entails serious negative consequences for its victims. However, scanty information is presently available on the interrelations of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychological gender with victimization. The purpose of this study is to examine these interrelations in a sample of Russian-speaking respondents. Methods. The study used (a) the Technique for Assessing the Adult Degree of Victimization developed by the author, (b) the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, and (c) the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. A large number of individual participants (n = 766, 394 women and 372 men), aged from 17 to 74 years, representing various professions and regions ensured representativeness of the study samples. Results and Discussion. Neuroticism was found to have positive associations with aggressive and dependent behaviors in women and men and with their overall victimization. Positive associations between neuroticism and vulnerability to manipulation were seen in women while there were negative correlations in men. Extraversion correlated negatively with overall victimization, aggressive and dependent behaviors in men, and also with vulnerability to manipulation in women and men. Extraversion correlated positively with aggressive and non-critical behaviors in women. Masculinity was positively associated with aggressive, self-destructive, and non-critical behaviors in men and boys and with their overall victimization, but negatively correlated with dependent behavior. Masculinity correlated positively with victimization resulting from self-destructive behavior in women and girls, but was negatively associated with victimization resulting from dependent behavior. Femininity was negatively associated with victimization resulting from aggressive behaviour in women, men, and boys, but positively correlated with vulnerability to manipulation in women. Because of the decline in the ‘aggressive behavior’ component of victimization, overall victimization in women declined with increasing age. By revealing the components of victimization that implement the examined correlations, this study complements the findings of previous research. The interrelations between victimization and extraversion significantly depend on gender differences, which explains the inconsistency of findings in previous studies.
Keywords
