Intimate Partner Violence: Behavioral and Sociodemographic Correlates of Attitudes

• In Event: 591 - Regular Session. Sex and Violence

Abstract

Intimate partner violence, particularly among young women in college, has received a great deal of recent media attention. Much research on intimate partner violence has also focused on college-enrolled women. In this paper, we examine an important aspect of the social context in which intimate partner violence occurs – the attitudinal context. Some have suggested that a “rape culture” contributes to intimate partner violence, but little research has asked whether and where a “rape culture” might exist. In this paper, we use a unique dataset with a large number of measures of attitudes toward intimate partner violence. We estimate OLS regression models of these attitudes, including measures of history of violence and perceived prevalence, along with multiple measures of sociodemographic characteristics. We find that disadvantaged young women are more tolerant of intimate partner violence. Young women who have experienced intimate partner violence, or whose family and friends have experienced intimate partner violence, are less tolerant of women’s victimization but more tolerant of women as perpetrators of intimate partner violence. On the other hand, women who perceive high levels of violence in their communities are less tolerant of women’s victimization and perpetration of intimate partner violence. We conclude that one’s own experiences, or the experiences of closely related others, lead to empathy for women as perpetrators of violence, but the experiences of those more distant do not. We call for further research on how these attitudes affect subsequent relationships and violent experiences, and how these attitudes differ for young men and women.

Authors

• Jennifer S. Barber, University of Michigan

• Yasamin Kusunoki, University of Michigan

• Jamie Louise Budnick, University of Michigan

• Andreja Siliunas, University of Michigan