Passive, invasive, and overlapping: three forms of intimate partner cyberstalking

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111502

Commentary

Intimate partner relationships are a common target for cyberstalking, but the behavior remains largely unexplored despite the negative effects.

This study explored the behavioral methods employed by intimate partners of cyberstalkers. Participants (N = 449, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and 50.1% of men were asked to complete an online questionnaire to assess various intimate partner's across mating contexts (i.e., short-term vs. long-term relationships) and goals (i.e., spousal retention vs. spouse). We assessed cyberstalking behaviors.

These cyberstalking behaviors were exploratory factor analyzed and reduced to reveal three dimensions: passive, invasive, and overlapping. These results indicated that both males and females engage in predominantly passive cyberstalking, but females perform more holistic, passive and invasive intimate partner cyberstalking. It was also found that women may engage in invasive behaviors to maintain a long-term spouse and acquire a short-term spouse.The associations between Dark Tetrad traits, social motivations, and cyberstalking were also explored, and all DarkTetrad traits were were shown to be associated with cyberstalking, but showed different patterns across the three forms, demonstrating a dimensional conceptualization of this online behavior.