A Social Learning Approach Martina Miller Perceptions of a target’s likelihood to be violent in an adult relationship based on gender and childhood experience of parent’s physical violence A Social Learning Approach Martina Miller

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

Variables Independent Variable’s Dependent Variable Gender of Target Male Female History of Violence in Childhood Violence No Violence Dependent Variable Participants perception of the target’s likelihood to be in a violent relationship as an adult.

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.

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

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

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

ANOVA Summary Table

Table of Means

Graph of Main Effects

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 parent’s 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 )

Limitations Participant's perceptions were used and they may lower ecological validity. Participant’s 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.