Investigation of the Effects of Violence Tendency and Moral Maturity on Attitudes Towards Physical Violence

Abstract

Today, violence is one of the most important individual and social problems that modern society still has difficulty overcoming. The first condition for preventing or at least reducing violence in society is to be able to determine the biopsychosocial factors related to it. Therefore, the present study aimed to understand some of the psychological factors related to violence, and examined the effects of violence tendency and moral maturity on attitudes towards physical violence. A total of 398 people between the ages of 18-65 voluntarily participated in the study. The participants were selected via a haphazard sampling method, which is one of the non-random sampling methods. Demographic Information Form, The Scale of Moral Maturity, The Violence Tendency Scale, The Scale of Attitudes on Violence and The Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs) Scale were used to collect the data. The results were analyzed with descriptive statistics as well as Pearson Correlation Analysis and Hierarchical Linear Regression. The results revealed that the research model explains 19% of the total variance in attitudes towards physical violence. While 17% of the change in attitudes towards physical violence was explained by the tendency to violence, only 2% was explained by moral maturity. So, the research indicates that violence tendency is an important determinant of attitudes towards physical violence. The findings are believed to be significant for the prevention of physical violence, both theoretically and in terms of practical efforts, and shed light on a more comprehensive and wider perspective in this field.