EXTRAVERSION AS A MODERATOR ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEAR OF CRIME AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE

Abstract

The participants for the study consisted of 273 undergraduate students drawn from Ebonyi State University Abakaliki. They consists of 141 females and 132 males, within the age range of 20 to 26 years (M = 23.00, SD = 1.65).  Simple random sampling technique was used to randomly select Ebonyi State University Abakaliki from among the higher institutions in Ebonyi State and the Faculty (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities). Psychology = 21, Political Science = 28, Economics = 32, English and literary Studies= 19, Sociology and Anthropology = 27, Linguistics and French = 30, History and International Relations = 22, Philosophy = 20, Mass communication = 34, Library and Information Science = 23 and Social Works = 17, and the participants that participated in the study. Big Five Inventory, Fear of Crime Scale and Brief Resilience Scale were used as instrument for the study. Correlation design was adopted while Pearson Product Moment Correlation statistics result revealed that fear of crime correlated significantly with psychological resilience, r = -.57, P < .01, r² = .40; extraversion correlated significantly with psychological resilience, r = .79, P < .01, r² = .62. Finally, result showed that interaction between fear of crime and extraversion is significantly negative (t = -11.45, p < .01; LLCI, ULCI = -.03, -.02). These findings imply that fostering extraversion may help protect individuals' psychological resilience against the adverse effects of fear of crime.

Keywords: Extraversion, fear of crime, resilience, psychological, Enugu state