Psychology of Violence最新文献

Objective: Bullying and Teen Dating Violence (TDV) perpetration are major public health concerns for middle school youth. Previous research indicates bullying perpetration predicts future TDV perpetration; however, the potential bidirectional associations between bullying and TDV have not been fully explored. The current study evaluated bidirectional, longitudinal associations between bullying and TDV perpetration in middle school youth.

Method: Cross-lagged panel models were used to evaluate bidirectional associations for bullying and TDV perpetration in middle school youth (n =1,840; M = 12.16 years, SD = 0.42) across three time points, 6 months apart, starting at the fall of 7^th grade and ending in the fall of 8^th grade.

Results: Findings indicated bullying perpetration and TDV perpetration demonstrated stability across time. Across all three waves, bullying perpetration at one time point consistently predicted TDV perpetration at the subsequent time point (medium effect sizes). TDV perpetration at T1 predicted bullying perpetration at T2 (medium effect size), and TDV perpetration at T2 did not substantially predict bullying perpetration at T3 (small effect size).

Conclusion: Findings indicate once middle school youth initiate bullying or TDV, they tend to persist in this behavior. Findings suggest all peer relationships (including friends and dating partners) may serve as training grounds for each other, with youth who learn violence perpetration is effective in one type of relationship (e.g., dating) transferring this behavior to others (e.g., friendship). Findings support the need for cross-cutting violence interventions that target both bullying and TDV simultaneously.

Objective: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with worsened perinatal antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence. While physical and sexual forms of IPV have been focused on, psychological and financial IPV have received less attention. We explored how perinatal women's experiences with psychological and financial IPV influenced their wellbeing, mental health, and HIV treatment.

Method: We conducted 45 in-depth qualitative interviews with perinatal women living with HIV and exposure to past-year IPV in Johannesburg, South Africa. Interviews were conducted in English, isiZulu, or Sesotho in two phases (2014-2015 and 2019-2020), transcribed verbatim, translated into English as necessary, and thematically double-coded.

Results: Pregnant and postpartum women described experiencing physical, sexual, psychological, and financial IPV. In addition to traditional acts of psychological violence, women described infidelity, abandonment, ignoring, and blame. Several women described psychological abuse as the "worst type" of violence, because of the long-lasting, debilitating effects on mental health. Dealing with the repetition of psychological abuse heightened depressive symptoms for some women, which in turn made ART adherence harder. Most participants were financially dependent on their partners and described partners having exclusive control over money and access to household food. Financial violence such as withholding food or refusing to give money for essentials seemed to indirectly reduce women's ability to take ART.

Conclusions: Psychological and financial IPV have pronounced influence on how women navigate the perinatal phase and HIV treatment. Addressing IPV during the perinatal phase may help to improve HIV outcomes and women and children's health.

Objective: Little is known about the role of school-level factors in adolescent violence. Using multilevel latent class analysis, we identified groups of adolescents and schools based on adolescent involvement in violent behaviors and assessed how these group memberships differed by individual and school characteristics.

Method: We used baseline data from a randomized controlled trial of a school-based violence prevention program. Participants included 2,768 adolescents (Mean_age=13 years) enrolled in 7^th grade across 24 public schools in southeast Texas.

Results: We identified three classes of adolescents, including a Non-violent class (74.5%), a Moderately Violent class (20.0%), and a Highly Violent class (5.4%). Adolescents in the latter two classes reported more stressful life events and less positive student-to-teacher relationships than their peers in the Non-Violent Class. Two school-level classes were also identified: Moderate Risk Schools in which the Non-violent adolescent class was the majority, and High-Risk Schools, which consisted mainly of Highly and Moderately Violent classes. Schools with larger sizes were more likely to fall in the High-Risk Schools class. Class memberships did not significantly vary based on student-to-student relationship, awareness of the need for reporting violent incidents, or % of economically disadvantaged students in schools.

Conclusions: To better address youth violence, schools should provide supports to buffer the negative impact of stressful life events and foster positive teacher-student relationships. Furthermore, given a disproportionate number of high risk students are in larger schools, school size should be considered a risk factor for aggression.

Objective: A growing literature documents the intergenerational effects of maternal childhood trauma (MCT) on offspring developmental outcomes. However, cross-sectional designs of prior studies limit understanding of long-term effects of MCT on the next generation. We examined the long-term association of MCT with the developmental trajectory of their children's aggressive behavior from preschool years to preadolescence, while considering maternal psychological distress as a potential mediator in a high-risk sample.

Method: Mother-child dyads (N = 256; 55% girls), urban, primarily African American, were enrolled in a prospective study about the sequelae of prenatal cocaine exposure. Aggressive behavior was assessed with the caregiver-reported Child Behavior Checklist at ages 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 12. At offspring age of 4 years, MCT was caregiver-reported using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and psychological distress via the Brief Symptom Inventory.

Results: Latent growth curve modeling indicated that MCT was indirectly associated with overall child aggressive behavior from 4-12 years of age via maternal psychological distress. Children's postnatal violence exposure was associated with a slower rate of decline in aggressive behavior over time. Boys had slower declines in aggression at a trend level, compared to girls.

Conclusions: MCT has a long-term adverse association with children's aggressive behavior via maternal psychological distress, which points to the need for therapeutic interventions that involve the provision of trauma-informed maternal support and the promotion of healthy behaviors of children. Postnatal violence exposure was also identified as a critical target of prevention to mitigate maladaptive development of aggression in children.

Objective: This experiment expands the findings from Abbey et al. (2021) by randomly assigning participants to one of three versions of a sexual aggression measure that differed only in the language used to convey lack of consent: (1) "make her"; (2) "without her consent"; or (3) "when she didn't want to."

Method: Men between the ages of 18 and 35 (N = 1291) were recruited through a Qualtrics Panel for a study of their dating and sexual experiences with women. They completed demographics; validity indicators; and one randomly assigned version of the sexual aggression measure.

Results: Self-reported rates of sexual aggression were high across conditions. Participants who responded to questions that used "make her" language reported significantly higher rates of verbally coerced penetrative sex than did participants who responded to questions about sex "without her consent" or "when she didn't want to." In contrast, self-reported rates of completed rape (i.e., physical force or incapacitation tactics), attempted rape, and nonpenetrative sexual contact did not significantly differ based on the language used to convey lack of consent. The magnitude of the correlations between the total number of sexually aggressive acts and convergent and discriminant validity measures was comparable regardless of the phrasing used to convey lack of consent.

Conclusions: Tacit societal approval of the use of verbal pressure to obtain sex makes it difficult for people to recognize their own use of these tactics. Societal-level solutions are required to create a climate in which freely given consent is the norm.

Objective: The goal of this study is to understand what type of sexual violence risk reduction intervention programs and elements are acceptable to Indigenous college students via quantitative survey research methods.

Method: 401 Indigenous college students (77.1% women, 19.7% men, 3.0% trans or Two Spirit) from across North America were recruited. Students read standardized descriptions of four different sexual victimization risk reduction interventions (SVRRIs) that ranged in characteristics and ranked the interventions. All students provided acceptability ratings for Flip the Script with Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) and a program of their choice. Participants also rated the importance of specific intervention elements, including cultural content.

Results: Most participants had a history of sexual victimization; 80.8% had been sexually victimized at some point in their life. The combined sexual violence and substance use reduction intervention (Sexual Assault Risk and Alcohol Use Reduction Program [SAARR]) was most frequently ranked as the first choice by 36.2% of the sample, p < 0.1. Considering acceptability ratings, all four SVRRIs were considered acceptable by most of the sample, with Flip the Script with EAAA rated highest of acceptability at 95.3% and Bringing in the Bystander having the lowest rate of acceptability at 71.4%. Cultural content was rated as a moderately important intervention element.

Conclusions: Indigenous college students are open to many different forms of sexual violence risk reduction interventions. Our findings suggest that simple cultural adaptations would be welcomed and scientifically supported to increase access and acceptability to violence interventions for Indigenous college students.

Objective: Many universities utilize bystander intervention training to address high rates of sexual assault on college campuses. To that end, research has long sought to characterize common barriers to bystander intervention to inform future programming efforts. However, recent efforts have also noted the importance of understanding intervention facilitators, or factors that encourage someone to help in risk situations. For example, a moral obligation to "step in" has been highlighted as a potential facilitator among college students who have intervened in sexual risk situations. Higher levels of empathy are also noted as encouraging prosocial intervention behaviors. Yet, what remains to be examined is the possibility that a greater combination of progressive moral foundations and empathic concern may favorably impact perceptions of barriers and behaviors as related to sexual assault bystander intervention.

Method: The current study tested this hypothesis in a sample of 1,144 undergraduate students who completed self-report assessments related to moral foundations, empathy, and perceptions of barriers and proactive behaviors in light of sexual assault risk.

Results: A series of moderation analyses revealed those who endorsed a greater combination of progressive moral foundations and empathic concern reported less perceived barriers and increased engagement in sexual assault bystander intervention behaviors. By contrast, those with lower empathy reported greater barriers and less intervention behaviors even in the presence of progressive moral foundations.

Conclusions: Should these virtues be modifiable as research suggests, activities enhancing progressive moral foundations and empathic concern may be important additions to bystander intervention programming on college campuses.

Objective: The goal of this study was to determine if parents view spanking as a form of hitting and view hitting children as more acceptable than hitting other family members, including dogs.

Method: Parents of children 0-8 years of age from across the United States (N = 286; 85% White; 56% women) were recruited through Prolific to participate in an online survey.

Results: Although 90% of parents agreed with a definition of spanking that included the word "hitting" and 33% used the term "hitting" in their definitions of spanking, parents also rated spanking as less severe than hitting. The percentage of participants who agreed that it is acceptable for parents to hit children (30%) was significantly higher than the percentage that reported it was acceptable to hit other family members (dog, 17%; wife, 1%; parent with Alzheimer's, 0%; Tukey tests, p < .001). Nearly a third of parents reported that completing the survey had changed their beliefs about spanking.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that American parents hold inconsistent beliefs about hitting children, including a judgment that it is more acceptable to hit a child than to hit a dog. These results exemplify the need for systemic parent education and policy interventions to bring children's human rights to live free from family violence in line with the recognized rights of adults.

Objective: Youth violence represents a significant public health problem that has serious and often lasting consequences for its victims and perpetrators. School-based interventions have considerable potential for playing a central role in prevention efforts. Although a variety of school-based interventions have shown some degree of success, further work is needed to improve their effectiveness. This article discusses several challenges that have impeded efforts to develop and evaluate school-based violence prevention programs and how these challenges might be addressed.

Method: This article draws upon theoretical and empirical research on youth violence to highlight critical issues that have limited efforts to develop effective school-based youth violence prevention programs.

Results: Applying a prevention science framework indicates that interventions are unlikely to be effective unless they target risk and protective factors most relevant to a specific population. Research on factors associated with youth violence suggests the need for comprehensive interventions that address risk and protective factors across multiple social-ecological domains. Subgroup differences in the effects of school-based violence prevention programs indicate the need for a better understanding of differences in patterns of risk and protective factors both across and within populations.

Discussion: Improving the effectiveness of school-based youth violence prevention programs will require an iterative process to identify subgroups of individuals across and within populations that differ in their patterns of risk and protective factors, to refine logic models to guide the development of interventions tailored to specific populations, and to evaluate interventions using designs that examine variability in intervention effects across subgroups.

Objective: After nearly a half of a century of work to develop effective approaches to prevent sexual violence, there is still considerable progress to be made. Prevention approaches are often universal in nature despite recognition of the need for targeted approaches. Behavioral outcomes are not routinely assessed in evaluations. Further, effective prevention programs are not widely disseminated, and some programs being implemented have not sustained evaluation. Closing the research to practice gap is a critical next step for the field.

Method: This commentary discusses how implementation science theories and methods can help to advance the development, evaluation and dissemination of evidence-based sexual assault prevention approaches.

Results: Implementation science principles and concepts can advance the development of sexual assault prevention programs by prioritizing stakeholder engagement, systematically adapting evidence-based programs, and designing for dissemination and sustainability. The evaluation of sexual assault prevention approaches by prioritizing hybrid designs that move beyond efficacy and effectiveness trials, attending to the factors that influence implementation outcomes, and better understanding the processes through which fidelity is achieved in program implementation. Implementation science can also be utilized to facilitate dissemination and de-implementation of programs, understand the barriers to uptake, and facilitate scale up.

Conclusion: Integration of implementation science principles and concepts into efforts to develop, evaluate and disseminate sexual assault prevention programs is an important for speeding progress in sexual assault prevention, towards the goal of ultimately reducing rates of sexual violence.