Banca de DEFESA: DAVI ANDRADE BARRETO

Understanding domestic violence by multiple partners in a Brazilian sample

intimate partner violence, multiple partner revictimization, multiple partner victimization, evolutionary psychology, partner selection

Intimate partner violence affects victims and society as a whole, and it can affect both men and women. One of the issues little investigated in the literature on domestic violence from an evolutionary perspective is revictimization by multiple partners, especially in the Brazilian context. According to this perspective, it is expected that the choice of partners favors the survival and reproduction of the offspring, elements that are harmed in an abusive relationship, even more so when they are recurrent. This research had a cross-sectional and exploratory character with the objective of identifying which individual characteristics configure groups with this type of revictimization in adults of both sexes. An online questionnaire was applied that contained: questions about sociodemographic data, experience of intimate partner violence, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Experience in Close Relationship Scale - Reduced and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Groups that experienced violence from multiple partners were found to have lower self-esteem, higher scores on attachment-related anxiety, higher scores on attachment-related avoidance, and more experiences of childhood violence than groups that experienced one or no domestic violence. These findings favor the perspective that revictimization is a by-product of adaptive functions of the human mind, related to the self-perception of value in the mating market and the relationship model learned with caregivers.