Examining Gender-Related Differences in the Implicit Attitude Towards Partner Violence

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Psychology - Social Psychology, grade: 1, Klagenfurt University (Institut für Psychologie), language: English, abstract: This thesis explores if the implicit attitude towards intimate partner violence (IPV) varies systematically as a function of observers and perpetrators gender, if women and men as observers have different implicit attitude towards IPV depending on which gender is the perpetrator and which gender is the victim of IPV. Until recently research on attitudes towards IPV has focused on explicit attitudes, while partner violence may have automatic behavioral components guided by implicit beliefs and attitudes. In the present thesis, the IAT - a measure of implicit attitudes that is easily adaptable to different contexts - measured participants implicit attitude towards gender-specific physical IPV. Participants (74 women and 20 men) also completed explicit measures which assessed partner violence victimization and perpetration, emotional flooding, feminist attitudes, rape myth acceptance, explicit attitudes towards IPV and depressive symptoms. The analysis revealed that in the IAT women strongly preferred violence of women against men over violence of men against women, while male participants showed no gendered bias. This finding demonstrates the importance of women's own gender bias for their implicit attitude towards incidents of intimate partner violence.