Features of victimity manifestation of people suffered from motor vehicle theft

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Luhansk State University of Internal Affairs named after E.O. Didorenko

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

O. Bohucharova,

Annotation

The psychological aspects of illegal vehicle theft as a situation of loss of a significant object (car) and the factor of victimization, a participant in a traffic crime are studied. The experimental results of the negative correlation between general and social intelligence and coping and cognitive-emotional behavioral strategies, as well as the impact of this connection on the post-criminal victimization of the identity of the affected drivers are presented. The authors conclude that there is a high demand for psychological support for victims of traffic crimes.

Key words: victim behavior, social intelligence, coping, cognitive-emotional regulatory strategies, situation of loss (property), criminal victimization, transport crimes.

Анотація

Ключові слова: віктимна поведінка, соціальний інтелект, копінг, когнітивно емоційні регулятивні стратегії, ситуація втрати (майна), кримінальна віктимізація, транспортні злочини.

Аннотация

Исследованы психологические аспекты кражи транспортного средства как ситуация утраты значимого предмета (автомобиль) и фактор виктимизации участника транспортного преступления. Приведены экспериментальные результаты обратной корреляционной связи. Чем выше показатель общего и социального интеллект, тем продуктивнее когнитивно-эмоциональные стратегии и наоборот (позитивное перефокусирование / самообвинение, катастрофизация), аналогично проблемно-, и эмоционально ориентированные копинг-стратегии. Различия двух групп с высоким и низким интеллектом значимы (t-тест). Изучено влияние данной кореляционной связи на посткриминальную виктимизацию личности потерпевших, существенно возрастающую при высоких индексах потенциала виктимного поведения (30% выборки уже на уровне «реализованной» виктимности). Также указано на сложности в защите личной собственности со стороны полиции и системы законодательного регулирования общественно опасных с высокой латентностью преступлений. Авторы делают вывод о высоком запросе на психологическую поддержку пострадавших в транспортных преступлениях.

Introduction

Scientific researches of economic crimes are extremely topical taking into account typical characteristics of Ukrainian realities - protracted economic crisis, military conflict and permanent reformation of economically- financial sphere into the bargain. As to illegal, unlawful possession of all types of transport vehicles, or the theft of a car that's much true. Today the common amount of cars that are in search (wanted) in the countries of the CIS and through Interpol exceeds 4.5 million units. Next to that, statistics testifies that the present stage of the theft of all types of transport vehicles is characterized by the action of many-sided complex of objective and subjective factors, considerable oscillation of dynamics and mainly due to changes in the general picture of criminality of thefts where the signs of the systemic and criminal network connections appear.

On the background of such statistics it is obvious that private or personal property does not exist out of categories of “mine-not mine”, freedom and its opposition - non-freedom possession loss, “personal property” - “unproperty”, also out of contradictions of criminals and victims of crime.

Theoretical background of our research refers to the victimology as a science that consists of criminalistics, criminology, criminal psychological knowledge (Н. Henting, 1940, 1947; V. Mendelson, 1956; Н. Ellenberger, 1956; А. Fattah, 1967; L. Frank, 1972; V. Polubynskyi 1979; V. Rybalska, 1979; V. Tuliakov, 1997; D. Ryvman, 2002; S. Mshakov, 2003 etc.). In psychological science exactly the “problematic” crossing of legal and social psychology gave the beginning of victimology as a field of psychological knowledge related to a personality and behavior of the victim from physical, moral or property harm (N. Volaniuk, G. Lozhkin, V. Papusha etc.). We will underline that legal, judicial and criminological aspects of the problem as a subject of both possession and theft of all types of transport vehicles unlike psychological were investigated intensively enough (D. Gorshkov, S. Kolba, M. Melnyk, O. Lyhola, V. Osadchyi, M. Svirin, O.V. Funin and some others). This thesis is evidently demonstrated in a number of articles dealing with legislation (Article 13, 41 of the Constitutions of Ukraine, Article 316-317 of the Civil Code of Ukraine, Article 289 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) where equality of all the subjects to the right of property before the law and punishment in cases of its violation is proclaimed.

The issue of a subject attitude to a loss - unlawful taking of object or a thing (movable property - car or other transport vehicles), their interdependency and going through the loss of a possession can be considered as a part of the broader concept of conscious, cognitive or emotion regulation or some of these regulation strategies, coping-strategies and, likewise, abilities of social intelligence (SI). SI is considered by most researchers as the ability to adequately understand and evaluate their own behavior and the behavior of other people. On J.P. Gillfofd's opinion, a person could be high on some of social abilities (e.g. - social translation) while being low on others (e.g. - expressing grouping). As to a driver who is a crime victim and who evidently excels at processing behavioral data and thus relate not poorly but successfully with people in the past, might be very poor at processing symbolic content such as semantic meaning of loss situation in the present.

As to coping-strategies, in the psychological sense, coping is defined as the spectrum of overcoming activity - from unconscious psychological defense to conscious and purposeful overcoming of difficult, stressful or criminal life- situations (R. Lazarus & P. Folkman, 1988; P. Spilberg, 1994; D. Terry, 2003). The cognitive approach to coping is based on mental process of how the individual appraises the situation - and loss situation too - which determines the level of stress and the unique coping strategies that the individual partakes by evaluating the coping resources (physical resources, social resources, psychological resources, and material resources) around him/her (R. Lazarus, S. Folkman, 1984). There are other ways to distinguish coping from the point of view of a cognitive perspective such as that of constructive and destructive thinking; concept of optimistic versus pessimistic; the perceived level of self-efficacy and self-esteem etc. There is also a definite relation between an individual's choice of behavioral coping-strategies and specific features of his social intelligence. In particular, in a number of studies, the role of social intelligence in shaping a person's readiness to work in extreme situations was revealed (N. S. Endler, J.DA. Parker, 2003).

Obviously, the concept of cognitive emotion regulation is narrowly related to the concept of cognitive coping. But cognitive emotion regulation theory is based on the assumption that thinking and acting refer to different processes. That's why such processes as cognitive strategies and behavioral strategies have been examined. Besides, the role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies as a contributing variable in the onset and maintenance of victimization personality' disorders is important too (O. Andronnikova, 2004; O. Bantisheva, 2014; M. Odintsova, 2015; S. Harkavets, 2017). Research results have shown that the regulation of emotions by cognitions or thoughts is inextricably associated with human life and helps people to keep control over their emotions during or after the experience of threatening or stressful events (Garnefski et al., 2001; Garnefski, van den Kommer et al., 2003).

As to psychological aspects of the problem of criminological victimization we deals with propensity of a personality to become a crime victim and, on the contrary, to show adequate behavior that's controlled by the personality as a crime victim in the frame of unlawful taking of vehicles.

Thus, one of the most important psychological interdisciplinary problem is the research of the subjective side of the criminological victimization that is psychological peculiarities of the personalities' victimization of a male in the sphere of the autovehicles theft.

The objective of the present study is to show a special role of a general and social intelligence and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in predicting vulnerability and victim complex formation of the autoowners' personality and coping strategies as a contributing variable into cognitive dimensions of victimization personality who suffered from unlawful possession of their transport vehicles.

It is reasonable to assume that in autoowners' personality as a subject of possession of highly status or necessary things - movable property (car, other transport vehicles) there are some dispositional features of a crime victim which help (facilitate) the commitment of impertinent crime of a theft and vice versa there are some “strength characteristics” of a personality which help to overcome the negative crime' results.

Sample: 1) 52 participants (aged 22-49 years, gender homogeny, only males), who became victims of the illegal theft of any types of transport vehicles in Dnipro, 2016-2017 years: 70% were married, 27% were single, and 2% were divorced; 2) 52 participants and the autoowners who didn't become victims of the illegal theft; 3) the 38 policemen were additionally questionnaired. The overall sample consists of three subsamples: 52 crime victims' participants, 52 participants, the usual autoowners' users; 38 policemen. The total number of respondents is 142.

Data tools were used to measure study variables: Wanderlik Personnel Test (WPT) (Wanderlik, 1980, adapted by Buzina, 1996); the Four Factor Test of Social Intelligence (SI) (O'Sullivan & Guilford, 1976, adapted by Mikhayilova); Coping- test (Folkman & Lazarus, 1984 adapted by Vasserman at al., 1994); Ways of coping questionnaire (WCQ) (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988, adapted by Kriukova, Kuftiak, 2001); Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2007, adapted by Pisarieva, Gritsenko, 2011); a method of “Diagnostics of Inclination to Victim Behavior” (MDIVB) (Andronnikova, 2004); a method of Role-play victim behavior (RPVB) (Odintsova & Radchikova, 2012); Family Adaptability & Cohesion Evaluation Scales (Faces III) (Olson, Portner, & Lavee, 1985, adapted by Eidemiller at al., 2003); Life Orientation Test (LOT) (Scheier & Carver, 1991, adapted by Sychov, 2008); author's questionnaire.

Relationships between cognitive strategies, coping process of a person victimization were studied by means of Pearson correlations, t-criterion of Student and Statistica package 19.0.

For verification of our hypothesis of the dispositional credible victimity in the situations of the objects or things loss, the clusterization of the sample by means of the median splitting was done. The sample was divided into two groups on a IQ and SI ratings. As all scales of this selection corresponded to the normality of the distribution, statistical analysis was done by means of Student t- criterion.

Cluster 1 included 25 participants who were characterized respectively by the the highest mean values of variable IQ general ratings (= 30,96) and highest mean values of SI score (= 23), and cluster 2 included 27 participants - with the lowest mean values of variable IQ (= 15,46) and the lowest mean values of variable SI score (= 4).

psychological victimization participant car theft

Results

The research was carried out into two stages. On the first stage the results demonstrate after an authorial questionnaire that the autoowners felt sharp emotional reactions: offense, irritation, a sense of stalemate, confusion, attacks of fury, "a desire, that it was not a case or not with me". Besides almost all victim drivers warmly remembered their own transport vehicle: "an old comrade", "helper", "a ferrous horse" etc. After the exposure of the disappearance of their auto the drivers - the participants of empiric research tried to arrange the situation of the loss by means of kinsmen, acquaintances, communication with policemen, to the "similar to themselves", use of alcohol, drugs, calmatives, distraction, address to God and to prayers.

On the second stage the results were demonstrated after the professional psychological author' instruments - scales, questionnaire, methodic. Taking into account above mentioned, the r-Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated between the types of coping strategies and the IQ (WPT), SI (Gilford) of participants suffered from illegal possession of a transport vehicle and usual auto owners' users. According to the data of the participants of empiric research it appeared that: the higher the IQ (24-30 points or higher) is, the more the crime' victims are inclined during the search of their cars to use problem-oriented coping strategies. If the victims participants have high IQ and SI, then they try somehow to solve the problems of the auto transport vehicle theft or somehow change the situation of the loss that causes stress. However, if this score is low (14 points or lower), then victim personality tries to calm down by means of psycho - physiological copings: that is to use alcohol and psychoactive remedies (drugs). As to usual auto owners' users who didn't suffer, they have IQ and SI scores much higher than the participants suffered from illegal possession of a transport vehicle.

Pearson correlations' analysis of the data between types of coping strategies and the SI ratings of the crime victims proved that the higher the SI on the scale “verbal expression” is, the more crime victims' participants are apt to use active copings strategies - “work with a problem” (r = 0,4169, p<0,05). But the lower the SI ratings after the scale “the group of expressions” is, the more crime victims' participants are apt to the choice of passive coping strategies - “confrontation coping” and “avoidance” (r = 0,4153, p<0,05).

The efficiency of coping, as it is known, is the best determined by the links of certain type of coping with the testability of the difficult or criminal situation. For example, problem-oriented copings are effective in the controlled situations, emotionally-oriented - in out-of-control ones. Therefore, we appealed to individual properties such as inclination to certain types of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, family adaptation and cohesion and optimism.

As shown in Tabl.1, cluster 2 (with the lowest IQ and SI mean values) is characterized by the lower values of positive cognitive emotion regulation strategies - positive refocusing, positive reappraisal and others and vice versa the higher values of negative cognitive emotion regulation strategies - blaming others, rumination, catastrophizing.

Table 1 shows statistically significant differences (by t-test) between the mean values of all the cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Cluster 1, in particular, is characterized by the lower values of negative ones - self-blame, blaming others, rumination, catastrophizing and the higher values of positive ones - reappraisal and higher score of unified coefficients of coping strategies efficacy. Positive refocusing per se refers to thinking about joyful and pleasant issues instead of thinking about the actual event (t-test = 4,01 p<0,05) and positive reappraisal as a strategy refers to a positive meaning to the event in terms of personal growth (t- test- not sign.). The opposite cluster 2 appeared to be as “feed-back” to cluster 1 and higher values of cognitive emotion regulation strategies - self-blame, blaming others, rumination, catastrophizing. As it is known, the most important significant predictors of depressive symptoms are catastrophizing, rumination, and self-blame. As to depression and active coping's strategies they were negatively correlated with crime victims' participants' intent to looking for the theft of autovehicles and vice versa optimism was positively correlated too.

Thus, cognitive emotion regulation strategies of the cluster 1 crime victims' participants are much more to be tolerated and master negative life experiences than cluster 2 participants. That's why, non-effective cognitive emotion regulation strategies: self-blame, blaming others, rumination, catastrophizing aren't the best ones of cluster 2 crime victims' participants with lowest IQ ratings and SI scores as to cope with masculine movable property loss.

Table 1

Inter-cluster differences in the CERQ scales and UC of Coping-test, WCQ