Amount Of Violence Research Articles

All in the Family:

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Giller was to investigate the incidence of violence among Jewish families within the context of conflict between ideals of what should be and the realities of what actually exist in family life as an ongoing source of tension and potential violence in the American Jewish family. METHODOLOGY: A non-experimental exploratory design was employed using secondary data based on a study from 1980 of Jewish Family Violence, under the auspices of Hebrew Union College and the University of Southern California. A survey of active members of L.A. synagogues was the basis for the study. There were 209 respondents. Violence was defined to incorporate the entire range of family violence, including sibling violence, spousal abuse, and child abuse. Demographic variables used to determine the distribution of violence included income, gender, education, marital status, country of origin, and whether the subjects were orthodox, reform, or conservative. Frequencies were reported and clinical implications addressed. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: From 209 respondents, a total of 22 spousal abuse and 118 child abuse cases were revealed. Four cases of sexual abuse and 11 cases of social isolation were reported. There were 129 incidents of siblings striking one another. Findings indicated that the high level of violence which exists in the general community also occurs in the Jewish community. Also, violence was not a phenomenon confined to any one segment of the Jewish community. No difference was found in the amount of violence reported by reform, orthodox or conservative Jews. Variables including gender, education, marital status, and country of origin revealed no differences between those who were involved in the violence and those who were not. The only demographic information which showed a difference was income. It was found that those respondents with higher incomes were more likely to be involved with intrafamilial violence. It was found that there was a high correlation between violence done to the respondent with violence done by the respondent. In addition, when violence done by the respondent was correlated with violence done by other family members to one another, an equally high association emerged. This indicated that Jews transmit family violence from one generation to the next. Additionally, the psychosocial stressors that impact a family also had a powerful impact on generational transmission of family violence. (i.e. the Holocaust) As a direct result of this study, Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles initiated The Family Violence Project, a program to reach out to and treat Jews involved with Jewish family violence. AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS: Implications of the study, according to the author, included addressing issues of physical safety for the woman and her children. Jewish components of the problem must also be addressed. The use of individual therapy, both supportive and psychodynamically-oriented, is also indicated. Groups for woman that include other Jewish women can help clients to lessen the shame, isolation and stigma induced by societal stereotypes. Services for abusers and children must also be provided. Initial interventions with abusive men must be behavioral. Services to children of abused women should be included, making the therapist available to validate the children's experience and help them to label it. Family intervention and groups are also useful tools for children. Couples therapy is not indicated until each partner has been in group treatment and controls have been put in place to allow for protection from violence. Communication problems must be addressed, as well as issues stemming from families of origin, especially if they were violent or abusive. In general, authors conclude that violence intervention must be informed by the cultural context of Judaism. EVALUATION: The contribution of the article is clearly practitioner-oriented. The specific suggestions for Jewish women and families could prove helpful in the Jewish context, but the general message of cultural situatedness of approaches to violence intervention is also a point that should be taken. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) KW - California KW - Religious Factors KW - Jewish KW - Domestic Violence Causes KW - Spouse Abuse Causes KW - Violence Against Women KW - Sibling Violence Causes KW - Child Abuse Causes KW - Child Physical Abuse Causes KW - Psychosocial Factors KW - Ethnicity KW - Sociocultural Factors KW - Family Ideology KW - Domestic Violence Perceptions KW - Spouse Abuse Perceptions KW - Child Abuse Perceptions

Perception of violence as a function of observer's ideology and actor's group membership.

This article examines how conservative and radical subjects explain and judge aggression perpetrated by institutional (i.e. policeman) or anomic (i.e. delinquents) agents. One hundred and twenty-nine university students in Lisbon, either very conservative or very radical, selected five causes out of a total of 30 to explain an aggressive act committed by a given actor toward an unknown victim in unspecified circumstances. Half of the causes were internal and half were external. Subjects also had to rate the amount of violence, the responsibility of the agent, and the potential punishment. In accordance with the hypotheses, conservative and radical subjects used different types of causes to explain the aggression of different actors and they judged the act differently according to the perpetrator. Moreover, for all subjects there was a significant correlation between perceived violence, responsibility and punishment. These judgements, however, correlated significantly with the type of attribution only in the case of conservative subjects: the more tolerant conservatives were, the more external causes they selected. These results are discussed in the light of the social dimensions most valued by observers of aggressive episodes.

Violence in Playboy magazine: a longitudinal analysis.

This paper analyzes the amount of violence in cartoons and pictorials from January 1954, through December 1983 in Playboy magazine. Inasmuch as the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography and Obscenity has focused upon magazines such as Playboy as potentially harmful to society because of the violence merged with sex, such an analysis is appropriate at this time. Each cartoon and pictorial for each issue of Playboy for the 30-year-period was examined for violent depictions. The average number of violent cartoons for the 30-year-period was 6.92/year or 0.58/issue. The average number of violent pictorials was less with an average of 1.89/year or 0.16/issue. The ratio of violent cartoons or pictorials to the total number of cartoons or pictorials was small. The ratio of violent cartoons to all cartoons was 25.2/1000 and for violent pictorials to all pictorials it was 8.6/1000. Moreover, the ratio of violent cartoons to total pages was 2.86/1000 and for violent pictorials 0.78/1000 pages. Although the overall number and ratio of violent cartoons and pictorials in Playboy over the 30-year-period examined was rare, a major question addressed was whether the amount of violence was increasing. Rather than a linear relation, a curvilinear relationship was observed with the amount of violence on the decrease in recent years. Although the effects of violence in sexual material is still being debated, those who argue for greater censorship of magazines such as Playboy because of its depictions of violence need a new rationale to justify their position.

Television and Delinquency

Television and Delinquency

Sexual arousal to nonsexual violence and sadomasochistic themes among rapists and non sex-offenders.

Twenty heterosexual rapists, 10 non-sex-offender patients from the same maximum security psychiatric institution, and 10 men with low socioeconomic status recruited from the local community were presented with audiotaped narrations while their penile tumescence was measured. The story categories were as follows: female victim/partner (neutral situation, consenting sex, rape, nonsexual violence, consenting bondage and spanking, masochistic bondage and spanking, and nonconsenting bondage and spanking) and male victim/partner (neutral situation, consenting sex, rape, and nonsexual violence). There were no differences between the two non-sex-offender groups, and they were combined. Rapists showed more sexual arousal to rape descriptions and less to consenting sex stories than the control subjects. As predicted, rapists were sexually aroused by stories involving nonsexual violence with female but not male victims. Surprisingly, there were no differences between rapists and control subjects in their responsiveness to the spanking and bondage stories. It was concluded that the amount of violence in the rape descriptions is critical in differentiati ng rapists from non-sex-offenders. A number of investigators have shown that rapists' sexual arousal patterns are different from those of non-sex-offenders (Abel, Barlow, Blanchard, & Guild, 1977; Barbaree, Marshall, & Lanthier, 1979). These differences are shown most clearly by a measure of the relative amount of penile tumescence increase elicited by audiotaped descriptions of rape and descriptions of consenting sexual intercourse. Relative responsiveness to these two stimulus categories is expressed by the rape index, the average response to the rape category divided by the average response to the consenting sex category. Rapists typically show higher rape indexes than non-sex-offenders. In our laboratory, we have replicated this basic finding using different subjects and stories by demonstrating that rapists are differentiable with the rape index from (a) non-sexoffender patients from the same maximum security psychiatric institution and (b) normal control subjects with low socioeconomic status

Alcohol Users and Non-Users: A Discriminant Analysis Between Two Subgroups of Batterers

The purpose of this research was to investigate differences between batterers who abused alcohol and those who did not use any alcohol at all during four battering incidents. The study examined violence attributes, the victim's use of alcohol, and demographic characteristics of the two subgroups of batterers. Discriminant analysis of these variables showed significant differences between the alcohol abusers and the non-users. The victim's use of alcohol was the highest contributor to the discriminant function, followed by age of the batterer, level of injury inflicted on the victim, batterer's socioeconomic status, the batterer's violence toward the children, and the total amount of violence sustained by the victim. Additionalfindings were that only 16 percent (N=58) of the batterers used alcohol excessively during all four battering incidents, and 19 percent (N=73) did not use any alcohol at all. The remaining 65 percent (N=259) showed an inconsistent pattern of alcohol abuse, no use, or some use.

Saturday Morning Television: A Profile of the 1974–75 Children's Season

An analysis of the behavioral content and character portrayals in children's Saturday morning television programs was conducted on two Saturdays representative of the 1974–75 broadcast season. A high amount of aggression was found on the commercial networks. In contrast, the public broadcasting network offered less than 25% of the amount of violence shown on the commercial stations. Of five categories of positive social behavior, only two appeared with meaningful frequency: altruism and sympathy/explaining feelings. Character analyses revealed bias, both in the frequency of appearance of different sex and racial/ethnic groups and in the character portrayals of those groups. The findings are discussed in terms of potential socializing effects on children.

Some Pertinent Questions on Collective Violence and the News Media

How responsible the coverage of conflict and confrontation by the news media is for the violence in contemporary American society involves at least four separate issues. (1) Do general news practices help create violence‐prone situations? (2) What effect does the presence of TV and other news media in such situations have on the likelihood that violence will erupt? (3) What impact do news reports of violence already in progress have on its subsequent spread or abatement? (4) Are predictions of violence more likely to become self‐fulfilling or self‐defeating? The information available suggests that the media are rarely a major influence on the amount of violence in any specific situation and that they function as much to deter as to incite violence. Yet, if media reports of both actual and potential violence affect expectations, then this will influence the nature of public protest as well as the official response to it and to other situations where the possibility of violent confrontation must be reckoned with.

Reflections on the Cultural Revolution in China

T IS NOW MORE THAN A YEAR since the first phase of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched at the end of June i966. There are earlier dates at which preliminary manifestations can be detected, but the month of July saw the first active phase. It is therefore a convenient moment to assess just what this movement was intended to achieve, and how far such aims have been attained. After much bewilderment at the unexpected nature of the earlier phases, the opinion of most foreign observers seems now to have settled on the view that the Cultural Revolution is the work of Mao Tse-tung, the concrete manifestation of his Thought-at least in its later form. The aim is therefore to disrupt the routine pattern of administration and conduct which was forming in the Communist Party hierarchy; also to give to the new generation, who knew not the Revolution of I946-48, a movement in which they can participate themselves, bear the main share of the activity, and feel that they, too, are revolutionaries who have carried forward something of the great heritage of the Long March and the War of Resistance. A further aim appears to be the reconstruction of the governing political machine in a manner differing sharply from the original character of the Communist Party in China, or anywhere else. To achieve these aims the Red Guard movement was called into being and was directed at first against persons and institutions identified, very arbitrarily, with old-fashioned ways of living, thinking, and conduct. These habits were denounced as revisionist, taking the capitalist line, and were attacked, often with a certain amount of violence and harsh treatment. Abruptly, after a fortnight or so of attacks upon bourgeois intellectuals and professional men, the Red Guard activity was switched to direct attacks upon the Party hierarchy, including the most senior members, the Head of the State, Liu Shao-ch'i, and the Secretary of the Communist Party, Teng Hsiao-p'ing. Some figures only a degree or so less eminent were personally denounced and driven from office. These included Lo Jui-ch'ing, Chief of the General Staff, Lu Ting-yi, head of the Propaganda Department, and P'eng Chen, Mayor of Peking. The Peking branch of the Party came under special attack, and almost all its leaders were displaced. On the other hand the highest targets, Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, although reviled and demonstrated against for a full year, still seem to hold their offices, even if it is impossible to estimate whether they can perform any significant functions.

The Sligo District Lunatic Asylum

At the monthly meeting of the Committee of Management of this asylum, as reported in the Sligo Independent of February 21st, we find the opinion expressed by one of the members of that body that “the attendants were perfectly right to use a certain amount of violence in order to keep proper discipline amongst the inmates.” This expression of opinion arose on a discussion on a sworn inquiry, held by a Lunacy Inspector, as to the alleged ill-treatment of an inmate by two attendants. The Inspector stated that the patients “gave evidence under evident fear of the consequences their action might entail.” A letter was read from a number of attendants denying any terrorism, and this was apparently accepted as disproving the Inspector's statement. The Inspector having admitted that the two accused attendants could not, on the evidence obtained, beconvicted in a court of law, the Committee, after declining the invitation of their chairman to ask the opinion of the Medical Superintendent, exonerated the two attendants from all blame.

TRUMATIC NEUROSES FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A SURGEON.

I feel honored by the invitation of this Section to discuss the subject of traumatic neuroses from the standpoint of a surgeon. I am very glad of the opportunity of doing this, because the subject is one in which I have been interested for some time, one which I have had unique and large opportunity of studying, and one upon which I have formed some definite opinions, opinions which are not widely known or accepted by either the general practitioner or the neurologist; opinions which I am confident will eventually be recognized, and which I consider of much practical value. The unique opportunity of studying traumatic neuroses to which I refer was the study of a train wreck in which the conditions were such that more than two hundred and fifty people were subject to the same amount of violence and the same condition capable of producing mental shock. I