IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jcjust/v38yi3p282-290.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Look who's stalking: Obsessive pursuit and attachment theory

Author

Listed:
  • Patton, Christina L.
  • Nobles, Matt R.
  • Fox, Kathleen A.

Abstract

Few criminological theories have been applied to the study of stalking perpetration, and even fewer address the presence of underlying psychological mechanisms. Attachment theory describes the ways in which an individual with a chaotic family environment in childhood may develop feelings of insecurity that may lead to increased aggression and violent behavior in adolescence and adulthood. In this study, a sample of college students (N = 2,783) were queried on self-reported stalking behaviors and the revised Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR-R) measure of adult attachment. Stalkers scored significantly higher on the insecure-anxious scale of attachment and lower on insecure-avoidant scale. Other psychological variables (major/minor psychiatric diagnoses, depression, and anger-related issues) were also examined, with a history of anger-related diagnosis or treatment positively and significantly associated with stalking perpetration. Implications for theory development in stalking and future research directions are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Patton, Christina L. & Nobles, Matt R. & Fox, Kathleen A., 2010. "Look who's stalking: Obsessive pursuit and attachment theory," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 282-290, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:38:y::i:3:p:282-290
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2352(10)00033-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cristina Civilotti & Chiara Sciascia & Maria Zaccagnino & Antonella Varetto & Daniela Acquadro Maran, 2020. "States of Mind With Respect to Adult Attachment and Reflective Functioning in a Sample of Men Detained for Stalking: Evaluation and Clinical Implications," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:38:y::i:3:p:282-290. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcrimjus .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.