Intimate Partner Violence and Same-Sex Couples: Examining the Antecedents of the Helping Intentions of Bystanders

Abstract

Researchers interested in intimate partner violence (IPV) have focused primarily on male-against-female cases. We conducted two experimental investigations to examine the influence of moral evaluation, attribution of responsibility, and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) on the willingness of bystanders to provide help to the victim in an IPV case involving a same-sex couple. Study 1 ( N = 195) surveyed a heterosexual participant sample, and Study 2 ( N = 120) surveyed a sample of gay and lesbian participants. In both studies, participants read a fictitious article describing an alleged IPV episode that occurred either in a male–male or a female–female couple. Each participant read an article describing one of two versions of a case of IPV: In one account, the victim admitted to infidelity and in the other, the victim did not confess to infidelity. The participants subsequently evaluated the victim and expressed their willingness (or lack thereof) to support and provide help to the injured party. In both studies, participants in the condition that included the admission of infidelity assessed the victim to be less moral and more responsible for the violent episode. Consequently, participants of both studies expressed lesser willingness to provide help to the victim. Moreover, in Study 1, the relationship between the admission of infidelity and the respondents’ willingness to support the victim was moderated by RWA. Particularly, the admission of infidelity by the victim reduced the respondents’ willingness to extend support only when they reported a medium to a high level of RWA ideology. By focusing specifically on same-sex IPV cases, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the reactions of witnesses with regard to IPV. Furthermore, it provides evidence about the underlying mechanisms mitigating the intervention of bystanders in such cases and identifies boundary conditions that exacerbate their (un)willingness to intervene.

Adding Insult to Injury: The Effects of Intimate Partner Violence Spillover on the Victim’s Reputation

“…Procedure. We adapted a procedure successfully used in previous literature (Baldry et al, 2015;Pacilli et al, 2017;Pagliaro et al, 2021aPagliaro et al, , 2021bPaolini et al, 2020). According to the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, before taking part in the study we informed participants about any relevant aspect of the study.…”

“…Pagliaro and colleagues (2020, 2021a, 2021b) have recently reasoned that bystanders’ reactions to what they witness relates to the perception and causal attribution of an incident (Heider, 1958), in particular, in terms of attribution of responsibility (for a recent review, see Penone & Spaccatini, 2019). This means that bystanders should be less willing to help an IPV victim to the extent that they consider her responsible for what happened.…”

“…In the present article, a central goal is to connect these two strands of research-that is, stigma related to IPV and the bystander approach-to investigate the mechanisms that may potentially contribute to perpetuating the stigma associated with the victim. To this end, we conducted an experimental study that explored whether two main underlying mechanisms that drive bystander reactions to IPV-moral evaluation of the victim and victim-blaming (Pagliaro et al, 2021a(Pagliaro et al, , 2021b-will also facilitate the perpetuation of stigma associated with IPV and further threaten the victim's reputation.…”

Violencia en el noviazgo offline y online, y la presencia de algunos factores asociados en hombres gay mexicanos.

“…La violencia en el noviazgo son aquellos actos violentos de naturaleza física, sexual y psicológica realizados por un miembro de la pareja hacia el otro (Longobardi y Badenes-Ribera, 2017). Se trata de un fenómeno que comenzó a ser estudiado en parejas del mismo sexo a partir de finales de la década de los ochenta y principios de los noventa por su consideración como un problema de salud (Pagliaro et al, 2019), y ha mostrado tasas comparables a las de parejas heterosexuales (Cannon, 2019). A pesar de ello, aún existe una carencia significativa en cuanto a las herramientas específicas con las que se pueda acceder a hombres gays y bisexuales que sean víctimas de violencia (Stephenson et al, 2013).…”

Revisión sistemática sobre características metodológicas en el estudio de la violencia de pareja en hombres que tienen sexo con hombres

“…Se trata de un área temática dentro de las relaciones interpersonales, cuyo estudio inicia en los años setenta (González et al, 2016;Santos & Caridade, 2017) orientando su análisis, principalmente, en las parejas heterosexuales (Whitehead et al, 2020). Es así como la investigación de este fenómeno centrada en parejas del mismo sexo surge a finales de los años ochenta y principios de los noventa (Badenes-Ribera et al, 2016) como resultado de haberse considerado un problema de salud (Kubicek, 2018;Pagliaro et al, 2019;Santos & Caridade, 2017). Es probable que por ser un área joven de estudio En este contexto, es importante resaltar que el estudio de esta población presenta algunas dificultades para su análisis, siendo una de las principales el heterocentrismo (De Jesus, 2013), que puede manifestarse en diversas cuestiones como el prejuicio sexual; esta conducta puede evidenciarse por medio de un rechazo verbal, discriminación y ataques físicos, los cuales también pueden tener un impacto negativo en la salud mental (Gómez & Barrientos, 2012).…”