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| Male Batterers Overestimate Social Norm Support |
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| Living - Relationships | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Saturday, 13 March 2010 10:00 | |||
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Seattle, WA, USA. Men who engaged in domestic violence consistently overestimated how common such behavior is, and the more they overestimated it the more they engaged in abusing their partner in the previous 90 days.
According to new research, hose men overestimated by two to three times the actual rates of seven behaviors ranging from throwing something at a partner to rape. The work is the first to document overestimation of intimate partner violence by batterers and is consistent with findings about a variety of other harmful behaviors such as substance use, gambling and eating disorders. This line of research looks at social norms, or what is considered to be appropriate and inappropriate behavior in society. "Social norms  theory suggests that people act in a way that they believe is consistent with what the average person does," says Denise Walker, a co-author of a paper in the journal Violence Against Women. She is a research professor of social work and co-director of the Innovative Programs Research Group at the University of Washington (UW).
Clayton Neighbors is the lead author: "We don't know why men make these overestimations, but there are a couple of likely reasons. Men who engage in violent behavior justify it in their mind by thinking it is more common and saying, Most guys slap their women around so it is OK to engage in it." "Or it could be that misperceptions about violence cause the behavior," said Neighbors, now an affiliate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, as well as a professor of psychology at the University of Houston. "Another way of looking at this would be wearing a red shirt. If you think everyone is wearing a red shirt then it is okay for you to wear one too." "Or, if you wear a red shirt you might overestimate the number of other people who are wearing red shirts," Neighbors said. The research looked at 124 men who were enrolled in a larger treatment intervention study for domestic violence. The men, all of whom had participated in violence against a partner in the previous 90 days, were asked to estimate the percentage of men who had ever engaged in seven forms of abuse. These included throwing something at a partner that could hurt; pushing, grabbing or shoving a partner; slapping or hitting; choking; beating up a partner; threatening a partner with a gun; and forcing a partner have sex when they did not want to. Data on the percentage of men who actually engaged in these abusive behaviors were drawn from the National Violence Against Women Survey, funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In every case the men vastly overestimated the actual instances of abuse. For example:
"With sexual assault the more a man thought it was prevalent the more likely he was to engage in such behavior. If we can correct misperceptions about the prevalence of intimate partner violence, we have a chance to change men's behavior. If you give them factual information it is harder for them to justify their behavior," Neighbors said. Walker added: "It is unclear if we can change perpetrators' behavior by correcting their misperceptions about intimate partner violence. However, work in alcohol use suggests that changing misperceptions about drinking changes drinking behavior among college students." "Consistent with social norms theory, people are motivated to be 'average' in many ways, particularly if the behavior in question could be considered risky or taboo." FundingThe National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the research.
ParticipantsCo-authors of the paper are Lyungai Mbilinyi, co-director of the UW's Innovative Programs Research Group and research assistant professor of social work; Jeffrey Edleson, a social work professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse; Joan Zegree, co-director of a domestic violence study and a UW adjunct assistant social work professor; Allison O'Rourke, former data manager of the Innovative Programs Research Group; and Roger Roffman, UW emeritus social work professor and founder of the Innovative Programs Research Group.
CitationNormative Misperceptions of Abuse Among Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence. Clayton Neighbors, Denise D. Walker, Lyungai F. Mbilinyi, Allison O'Rourke, Jeffrey L. Edleson, Joan Zegree, and Roger A. Roffman. Violence Against Women 2010; 16(4): 370-386. doi:10.1177/1077801210363608
Abstract This research was designed to evaluate the applicability of social norms approaches to interventions with male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). Participants included 124 nonadjudicated IPV perpetrating men recruited from the general population who completed assessment of their own IPV behaviors via telephone interviews and estimated the prevalence of behaviors in other men. Results indicated that IPV perpetrators consistently overestimated the percentage of men who engaged in IPV and that their estimates were associated with violence toward their partner over the past 90 days. Findings provide preliminary support for incorporating social norms approaches into clinical applications. Keywords: domestic violence, motivational interviewing, social norms.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 12 March 2010 17:42 |
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