SAFETYLIT WEEKLY UPDATE

We compile citations and summaries of about 400 new articles every week.
RSS Feed

HELP: Tutorials | FAQ
CONTACT US: Contact info

Search Results

Journal Article

Citation

Capezza NM, D'Intino LA, Flynn MA, Arriaga XB. J. Interpers. Violence 2017; ePub(ePub): 886260517741215.

Affiliation

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0886260517741215

PMID

29294990

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that male abuse is more damaging than female abuse, just as it previously has been assumed that physical abuse is more harmful than psychological abuse. We sought to examine gender assumptions given that they may cause people to overlook the harm that men experience with a psychologically abusive partner. The current experiment compared perceptions of male and female perpetrators of psychological abuse, and examined whether gendered perceptions were affected by sexist beliefs or participants' own sex. The experiment also explored the effect of the victim's response to a perpetrator's abuse. College participants ( N = 195) read a scenario depicting a hypothetical marital conflict that manipulated the sex of the perpetrator, the level of abuse (abuse or no abuse), and whether the victim did or did not respond with some aggression. In scenarios that featured abuse (relative to no-abuse conditions), a male perpetrator was consistently perceived more harshly than a female perpetrator. Participant sex and sexism did not moderate this gender-based perception. Varying the victim's response in the scenario affected perceptions more in the no-abuse condition than in the abuse condition. The findings are discussed in terms of robust gender assumptions and the difficulties in challenging such assumptions.


Language: en

Keywords

ambivalent sexism; gender; perceptions; psychological abuse; traditional sexism; victim’s response

NEW SEARCH


All SafetyLit records are available for automatic download to Zotero & Mendeley
Print