Consequences of Threats, Harassments and Stalking in the Modern Society

Threats and harassments are increasing in the modern society and social media are being used as a new arena. When it escalates over time and becomes more intrusive towards a person stalking occurs. As a consequence victims experience symptoms of psychological distress, where they withdraw from society in order to minimize their exposure as this might trigger the stalker even more. In order to reduce the consequences of this devastating public health problem, which occurs for about 9-20% around the world, we need to understand the decision-making process in victims and how this in turn affects their coping strategy.

The overarching aim with this research project is to investigate how decision-making interacts with fear and the type of coping strategy used when being stalked, and if this varies across types of victims.

This is a pilot study, conducting explorative research aiming at elucidating the interaction of fear and distress with the nature of stalking and its consequences on coping strategies. This experimental study will take place in the Virtual Reality laboratory and will investigate how decision-making interacts with fear in a made up stalking situation.

The findings from the proposed research project will provide new knowledge on decision-making processes and related coping strategies in different types of victims of stalking. This information will be used to help victims, as well as, to educate the general community.