Perceptions of a target

1
Perceptions of a targets likelihood to be
violent in an adult relationship based on gender
and childhood experience of parents physical
violence

• A Social Learning Approach
• Martina Miller

2
Social Learning Theory(Akers 1973)

• 4 components
• Imitation person imitates behaviors of people
  they admire
• Definitions - the attitudes and values people
  hold about the law and deviant criminal acts
• Differential Associations - person learns from
  the attitudes, values, and behaviors of a
  significant person
• Differential Reinforcement balancing rewards
  costs of certain behaviors

3
Variables

• Independent Variables
• Gender of Target
• Male
• Female
• History of Violence in Childhood
• Violence
• No Violence

• Dependent Variable
• Participants perception of the targets
  likelihood to be in a violent relationship as an
  adult.

4
Hypotheses

• Participants will perceive both male and female
  targets to be likely to be in a violent adult
  relationship if they experienced violence between
  their parents in childhood.
• The participants will be more likely to perceive
  a male target to be involved in a violent adult
  relationship that experienced his parents being
  violent towards one another during childhood.
• Another hypothesis is that the male target will
  be perceived as more likely to be in a violent
  relationship without a childhood of violence than
  a female target.

5
Method

• 60 Participants
• Convenience Sample
• 4 Vignettes
• Male child experienced violence
• Female child experienced violence
• Male child did not experience violence
• Female child did not experience violence
• 2x2 Between-subjects ANOVA

6
Manipulation Check
Please answer the following questions and please
circle your answer. Was the target male or
female? Male or Female Did the target have a
history of violence between his or her parents
in childhood? Yes or No
7
Results

• Significant main effect of gender (F(1,30)4.383,
  p.046)
• Significant main effect of hx of violence between
  parents (F(1,30)14.617, p.001)
• There was not a significant interaction between
  gender and hx of violence between parents

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ANOVA Summary Table
9
Table of Means
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Graph of Main Effects
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Discussion

• The findings are consistent with social learning
  theories differential associations components.
  Which says a person learns from the attitudes,
  values, and behaviors of a significant person.
• All three hypotheses were confirmed. Males were
  perceived as more likely to be violent than
  females with both violent and non-violent hx.
  Males and females were both perceived as likely
  to be in a violent relationship with a history of
  violence compared to a history of non-violence.
• Mialon and Mialon (2006) said that males tend to
  become aggressive in relationships in adulthood
  if they experienced their parents physical
  violence in childhood.
• Reasons men might become violent could be the
  interaction patterns of the parents, or innate
  personality traits (Walker and Browne 1985 )

12
Limitations

• Participant's perceptions were used and they may
  lower ecological validity. Participants
  perceptions might not be consistent with what is
  really happening and therefore would not
  generalize to other situations.
• Future research should investigate real cases of
  violence in childhood and adult relationships
• Female participants could have only had
  experience with males that were violent in their
  life and might tend to rate males as more violent
  or vice versa. This could threaten the internal
  validity.
• More research should be done with people who are
  actually involved in violent relationships
  because partner violence is very common.