Stockholm Syndrome and Gender-Related Ideologies and Attitudes: A Psychometric Assessment

Abstract

Stockholm syndrome, a paradoxical phenomenon, characteristic of the particular psychological functioning of people in captivity and victims of mistreatment, sexual abuse and gender-based violence, arouses significant interest in psychological sciences. However, the related instrumentation remains limited, due to the fact that there is not a significant number of measurements that can evaluate it. In addition, the current main measure (the scale for identifying “Stockholm Syndrome” reactions in young dating women/Escala para identificar reacciones de síndrome de Estocolmo (SISSR) relacionada con violencia de pareja), only exists in the English and Spanish languages; which constitutes a linguistic obstacle for its administration to individuals who speak other languages, such as French. However, the simple translation of the items of a measurement does not guarantee its reliability from a psychometric point of view. In this vein, this study proposes the translation in French and validation of the Spanish version of this measure. It also proposes, as part of testing the predictive validity of the measure, to link the construct of Stockholm syndrome with gender-related ideologies and attitudes. The validation of the French version of the Stockholm syndrome measurement scale was carried out with two samples (N = 836) consisting entirely of women. The exploratory test (EFA) carried out with 400 participants reveals a reliable tri-factorial structure of 16 elements, after the elimination of 33 elements, due to factor loadings lower than .40. The confirmatory analysis of this factorial structure, using the Structural Equation Method (CFA-SEM), carried out on a sample of 436 participants, supports the tri-factorial structure which fits the data better. Tests of factorial invariance of the measurement, depending on marital status (n1 = 215 married women; n2 = 221 concubine) reveal a structural equivalence between the groups. The predictive validity of the measure reveals that Stockholm syndrome is linked to attitudes towards gender-based violence, sexism, feminism, non-justification of the gender system and gender-based social dominance.