Views of justification and blame of violent interpersonal dating relationships

There is an abundant amount of literature dedicated to examining perceptions of domestic violence. Despite the substantial amount of literature, few studies have focused on attitudes toward domestic violence in dating relationships. This study uses a large convenience sample of college students to investigate how college students assign responsibility when presented with two domestic violence scenarios that vary contextually. One scenario depicts a conventional male on female case of intimate partner violence while the other is a more ambiguous scenario involving behaviors that could be construed as “mutual violence.” Bivariate and multivariate analyses were employed to analyze the effects of various variables on perceptions of blame with regard to individuals in each scenario. Overwhelmingly, participants were more inclined to blame the males in both scenarios with the male in the stereotypical scenario being the most likely to be blamed. However, several variables effected individual perceptions of blame with regard to the female victims. Most notably, attitudes toward women and sex had significant impacts on whether or not participants blamed the female victims for their own victimization. Attitudes toward women proved to have a more influential effect even when controlling for an individual’s justifications of violence.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Policastro, Christina

Contributors dc:contributor

• Eigenberg, Helen
• Garland, Tammy; Bumphus, Vic
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Dating violence

Licence

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/368

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1508