Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Violence

Abstract

A survey of university students explored correlates of sensitivity to violence, defined as a person's average rating of the severity of violence of several behaviors. The 79 women were somewhat more sensitive than the 39 men. Sensitivity was associated with the tendency to describe oneself as violence sensitive or violence tolerant, with the person's manner of defining the concept of violence, and with the tendency to include verbal abuse and inaction as possible forms of violence. Sensitivity was not clearly associated with some other variables, such as attitudes toward bullying and acceptability of hunting. The potential utility of measuring sensitivity to violence, and further work suggested by these findings, are discussed.

Individual differences in interpretations of justified and unjustified violence.

“…This supports previous studies that concluded that when a person understands a violent act to be Justified, they tend to perceive it as being less violent than when they understand it to be Unjustified, even when it is the exact same act (Collyer et al, 2011Moore and Cockerton, 1996). The resulting difference in severity of video violence ratings between conditions can be viewed as an example of the framing effect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1986), in which different conclusions, positive or negative, are drawn on the same scenario depending on context and might result in more or less punishment, say, by a jury.…”

“…Not much work has been done to differentiate the characteristics of those who are more VS versus a more VT person. There have been gender differences found wherein females tend to be more sensitive to violence than males, but it is only a moderate difference (η 2 = 0.10) and does not fully describe the differences between those higher and lower on the Violence Sensitivity spectrum (Collyer, Brell, Moster, & Furey, 2011).…”

“…VS individuals are those who tend to rate behaviors higher (i.e. more violent) on a Likert or magnitude estimation scale, and VT individuals are those who rate the behaviors less violent Collyer & Melisi, 2008;Collyer, Brell, Moster, & Furey, 2011). There are differences in the perception of violence between cultures at large, and also between individuals, due to varying ideologies and attitudes.…”

Determining the sensitivity of university students to violence toward children

“…2,11 In many studies, sensitivity to violence has been measured by means of asking-answering. [12][13][14] Violence, which affects children's physical and psychosocial health, is an issue that should be addressed by all health professionals. 15,16 It is possible to say that university students are more sensitive to most issues that interest the social structure, more independent in front of social and institutional responsibilities, and closer to intellectual life compared to adults.…”

Investigation of Teachers’ Violence Sensitivity Levels Towards Children According to Different Variables

“…Although violence against children is the subject of numerous studies in the literature, it has been observed that in general there is limited number of recent studies conducted on sensitivity to violence (Aptarahsvili et al, 2016;Brell, 2007;Corey, 2008;Collyer, Gallo, Corey, Waters & Boney-McCoy, 2007;Collyer, & Melisi 2008;Collyer, Johnson, Bueno de Mesquita, Palazzo& Jordan, 2010;Collyer, Brell, Moster and Furey, 2011;Egan, 2010;Egan & Collyer, 2012;Egan, 2014;Garcia-Ramirez, 2016;Marcotte, 2015;Scharrer, 2008) and sensitivity to violence towards child (Kurtuluş, 2018;Özyürek, 2017;Özyürek, Sezgin, & Kürtüncü, 2017;Çavuş, Topçu-Bilir and Özyürek, 2017). In this respect, it is thought that the examination of teachers' violence sensitivity towards children can be helpful to recognize and prevent violent incidents that can be experienced by children in domestic and school environment.…”