The Interaction of Jealousy & Depression in Understanding Perpetration of Dating Violence

Background:  While dating violence has gained attention in the last decade as an important public health issue, the understanding of perpetration remains limited. This study builds on the existing research around jealousy to enhance our understanding of how various factors come together to increase risk of perpetration.

Attitudes and beliefs are a common area of inquiry in the perpetration literature, including narcissism, gender roles, dominance, and acceptance of partner violence. Some research suggests that it is not broad attitudes but rather attitudes specific to a partner that are most important. Jealousy has shown promise as a predictor of abuse, but previous research suggests that jealousy alone is not the problem and that other factors likely moderate this construct. To this end, the current study looked at depression, jealousy, and sense of entitlement to see if the combination of factors predicts abusive behaviors.

Methods: Data for this poster comes from a cross-section survey design of students from a mid-size, private university in the northeast. All students were invited to participate in a study on dating behaviors and beliefs. A combination of single item questions and validated scales were used to examine areas such as jealousy, depression, sense of entitlement, and abuse perpetration (economic, emotional, physical, and sexual).

Results: Preliminary analyses showed that jealousy, depression, and entitlement were all associated with the different types of abuse perpetration. For example, about 51% of variances of emotional abuse were accounted by the regression model, and jealousy (b = .478, p < .001), depression (b = .192, p < .001), and entitlement (b = .230, p < .001) were all significantly related with emotional abuse in dating. When the effects from the combination of factors were included in regression models, the results indicated that the interaction between jealousy and depression was also significant (b = 1.011, p < .001), suggesting that the effects of jealousy on abusive behavior depended on the level of depression. For the other types of perpetration (physical abuse and sexual abuse), jealousy, depression, and entitlement were significantly associated with perpetration, and the significant interaction effects suggested that the effects of jealousy may vary depending on the level of depression.

Implications: These results align with previous research that suggests jealousy alone may not predict abusive behavior; these results find that depression moderates jealousy and its impact on abusive behavior. The existing literature has suggested that predicting abuse is more nuanced than finding a single responsible construct, and the results of this study affirm that a combination of factors, including jealousy, depression, and sense of entitlement, may help provide a more holistic understanding of perpetrator characteristics. These results advance the research base and can provide guidance to practitioners in both prevention of abuse (by identifying risk factors) and treatment of perpetrators.