Consequências emocionais, cognitivas e comportamentais da vitimização por roubo

Abstract

The term mugging is used in the everyday referring to the action of one or more individuals, commonly armed, who approach other people to steal their property. Although this term is not used in the Brazilian Penal Code, there is an expected penalty for the crime of robbery, whose description is similar to the definition of mugging and differs from the crime of theft. Robbery is more serious because it presupposes the use of force, which can lead to death. In addition, damages resulting from a robbery restrict the ability of individuals to properly exercise various roles, such as parental, marital and occupational, resulting in significant impairment in interpersonal relationships in various settings, such as family, school, and work. In view of these elements, the present study has as main objective to evaluate the cognitive, emotional and behavioral outcomes of robbery victimization. Specifically, it is expected to estimate if and which specific situational variables contribute to greater sequelae in the victims and to evaluate to what extent the attenuating and aggravating factors pointed out in the literature are relevant in the local context. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, two empirical studies were carried out: Study I compared victims and non-victims with regard to factors identified as possible complications of crime, while Study II assessed the individual impact of specific contextual variables in the various sequelae and the specific effect of mitigating factors. As a result, it can be observed in Study 1 that victims and non-victims differed in terms of anxiety, fear of crime, perceptions of vulnerability and self-efficacy, and the taking of some protective measures. In Study 2, it was observed that only Control and Retraining, Conversion, Addiction strategies presented a relation with the analyzed impacts. Social Support was not related to the consequences of the robbery. These results were discussed based on the literature. It is considered that the objectives of this dissertation have been reached since it was possible to analyze the impacts of robbery victimization and its correlates that are more prominent in the literature. However, it is possible to point out some limitations in the research, such as the reduced size of the sample and the quality of some measures used. For future research, we suggest the use of larger samples, besides the previous adaptation of the scales to local context and the realization of longitudinal studies.