Legitimizing Intimate Partner Violence: Moral Evaluations,Attribution of Responsibility,and (Reduced) Helping Intentions

Abstract

This article examines the influence of moral evaluations and attribution of responsibility on individuals’ willingness to provide help if witnessing an intimate partner violence (IPV) episode. A total of 121 undergraduates read a fictitious article from a newspaper, allegedly describing an IPV episode. According to the experimental condition, participants read that the victim had either admitted infidelity or denied it. After reading the newspaper article, participants evaluated the victim on several dimensions (i.e., morality, competence, and sociability), rated the extent to which they deemed her responsible for the violence (i.e., the internal attribution of what happened), and expressed their willingness to provide help and support to the victim herself. In the admission condition, the victim was evaluated as less moral and more responsible for the episode of IPV. These evaluations, in turn, lowered the willingness to provide help to the victim. This study confirmed the role of moral evaluations and internal attribution on bystanders’ reaction, and we present practical implications for intervention in a field, IPV, in constant need of updated validated evidence for efficient prevention strategies.

Keywords

intimate partner violence moral evaluations attribution of responsibility bystanders’ intervention

Intimate partner violence (IPV)—that is, physical, psychological, and sexual violence (Kilpatrick, 2004)—is widespread affecting one out of four women at least once in life, with a wide range of physical and psychological consequences for the victims, even death (World Health Organization [WHO], 2013). Despite the impressive prevalence of IPV in Western societies, most cases remain unnoticed or at least unreported to authorities (e.g., Gracia, García, & Lila, 2009; WHO, 2013). This is why social psychologists investigated bystanders’ reaction to IPV, to ascertain what makes people believe a woman victim of IPV deserves and needs (their) help, support, and protection and what, on the contrary, makes them to deny any such willingness to help (for a recent review, see Baldry, Pacilli, & Pagliaro, 2015) even among police officers (Baldry, Pagliaro, & Porcaro, 2013).

Scholars have suggested that multiple factors may influence bystanders’ willingness to intervene in support of a female victim of violence. These factors include, among others, gender and age of respondents, with women (vs. men) and younger (vs. older) being more prone to help the victim and report to authorities, as well as blaming her less (Bryant & Spencer, 2003). Cultural features play a leading role on bystanders’ reaction too: For instance, in the so-called culture of honor (Baldry et al., 2013; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996), masculine honor is considered a positive moral standard, related to one’s perception of worth and to other people’s respect. Thus, female adultery constitutes a moral violation that severely threats male honor (Vandello & Cohen, 2003). As a result, in this mysogenist cultural perspective, IPV is justified or even accepted when it serves to reestablish the jeopardized masculine-based honor (Baldry & Winkel, 2008; Vandello & Cohen, 2003). Flood and Pease (2009) showed that attitudes toward violence and gender roles are fundamental in understanding reactions to IPV: Individuals who endorse a violence-condoning set of attitudes are less likely to report the episode to the police (Baldry & Pagliaro, 2014), attribute more blame to the victim, and punish less the offender (e.g., Pavlou & Knowles, 2001; West & Wandrei, 2002).

According to the attribution theory (Heider, 1958), bystanders’ reaction to what they witness relates to the perception and causal attribution of what is going on. Internal attribution of responsibility (e.g., victim blaming, attribution of responsibility) affects subsequent reactions (Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Shlien-Dellinger, Huss, & Kramer, 2004; Pavlou & Knowles, 2001; Witte, Schroeder, & Lohr, 2006). This is particularly true in cases of IPV and other crimes against women (for a review, see Stewart, Moore, Crone, Craft DeFreitas, & Rhatigan, 2012). The consequence of victim’s internal attribution of responsibility may be a strategy of moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999), that is, bystanders’ belief they should not intervene in support of a victim, believing what happens to victims is in some ways their fault (Lerner, 1970).

But what leads bystanders to attribute responsibility to the victim? In the present study, we propose that moral evaluations of the victim are crucial in leading bystanders’ judgment of an IPV situation, explaining why bystanders deem the victim responsible for the violence. How then bystanders morally evaluate victims and attribute responsibility, in turn, might affect willingness to report the episode and to provide them help and support. Explaining the process by which causal attributions for IPV victims are formed has practical implications for prevention and intervention (Stewart et al., 2012).

The Present Research

We aimed to provide evidence that both victim’s moral evaluation and attribution of responsibility are crucial in guiding bystanders’ reaction when exposed to an IPV episode. In particular, negative moral evaluations and attribution of responsibility might decrease bystanders’ likelihood to intervene in support of the victim.

Previous studies have shown that extralegal factors—meaning those characteristics that are independent from the actual a crime, such as for instance alleged victim’s infidelity—strongly reduce bystanders’ willingness to help and support the victim herself (e.g., Baldry et al., 2013; see also Viki & Abrams, 2002). In their study, Baldry and colleagues (2013) suggested that one out of the possible mechanisms driving this effect is victim’s infrahumanization: That is, an unfaithful woman is perceived as less human, a form of prejudice that is typically associated with immoral evaluations. Indeed, the concepts of humanness and morality are strongly connected, and individuals are often considered to deserve moral treatment by virtue of being human (Pacilli, Roccato, Pagliaro, & Russo, 2016). Here, we look at a further underlying mechanism that may potentially cause bystanders’ reduced willingness to intervene. Research on social judgment and perception has shown that morality plays a leading role in forming impression about an unknown target and subsequent behavioral reactions (Brambilla & Leach, 2014). People tend to form better impressions toward moral (compared with competent or sociable, for instance) targets, they typically do not like people they consider immoral, and they do not help people they do not like (Pagliaro, Brambilla, Sacchi, D’Angelo, & Ellemers, 2013). Morality-based (vs. competence or sociability) evaluations are more stable over time and better predictors of future behavior as they mirror the true nature of a person (Pagliaro, Ellemers, Barreto, & Di Cesare, 2016). Thus, moral evaluation more likely leads to internal attribution of responsibility. Being sexually unfaithful toward a partner, for a woman, in some countries is illegal, in most others, at best, is consider immoral, in turn influencing attribution of responsibility for the violence the alleged betrayed partner uses (Baldry et al., 2013; Baldry & Winkel, 1998; 2008; Vandello & Cohen, 2003). When a woman exposed to IPV is deemed responsible by others due to these moral judgments, she is less likely to receive help and support. To disentangle whether bystanders’ reactions in IPV cases are affected by moral rather than more general positive/negative evaluations, we further assessed participants’ evaluations of the victim in terms of two other relevant dimensions of social judgment: competence and sociability. Social perception research showed in fact that individuals’ evaluations of themselves, others, and groups are based on three classes of information: morality, competence, and sociability (e.g., Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto, 2007).

We thus hypothesized that a victim admitting (vs. not admitting) infidelity would be perceived as less moral (Hypothesis 1 [H1]) and deemed more responsible for the violence (Hypothesis 2 [H2]), and participants should be less willing to help her (Hypothesis 3 [H3]). We further hypothesized that moral evaluations and attribution of responsibility would mediate the effect of admission of infidelity on behavioral intentions, reducing willingness to provide help and support (Hypothesis 4 [H4]). As attitudes toward violence are important for predicting attributions (Stewart et al., 2012), we further control for participants’ sexist beliefs on the hypothesized mediational pattern.

Method

Participants

In total, 121 undergraduates were recruited in a larger research conducted in Italy (84 females, 31 males, six unknown; M age = 24.10, SD = 2.93) and voluntarily participated in the study.

Procedure

In line with ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, before taking part in the experiment, participants were informed about any relevant aspect of the study (e.g., methods, institutional affiliations of the researcher); they were informed of the right to refuse to participate in the study or to withdraw consent to participate at any time during the study without reprisal. They then confirmed that they understood the instructions well, accepted to participate, and started filling out the questionnaire. Participants read a fictitious article from a local newspaper, describing the case of a woman beaten up by her husband who had accused her of infidelity. This vignette manipulation has been widely adopted in the literature to investigate bystanders’ reactions (among others, Baldry et al., 2015; Baldry & Pagliaro, 2014; Baldry et al., 2013; Pacilli et al., 2017; Seelau & Seelau, 2005). Randomly, participants read that the victim had either admitted infidelity (n = 62) or denied it (n = 59). This manipulation was checked by asking participants to recall the victim’s behavior on a multiple-choices question. Eleven participants failed this manipulation check, and their responses were discarded from the data set (retained sample = 110). We run the analyses with the whole sample, and the results were almost identical. In particular, the crucial mediation path tested and reported below was still significant.

After reading the IPV episode, participants evaluated the victim (“to what extent do you consider the woman described in the paper as . . . ”; on a scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 9 = a lot; Leach et al., 2007) on the three fundamental dimensions of judgment: morality (trustworthy, honest, sincere, moral; α = .91), competence (competent, intelligent; r = .55, p < .001), and sociability (sociable, friendly; r = .25, p = .006).

Four items measured participants’ attribution of responsibility to the victims for the IPV (e.g., “Anna is responsible for what had happened”; “Anna induced her husband to beat her with her own behavior”; “Anna is not responsible at all for what had happened”; “There could exist a lot of reasons that we are not aware of for Anna being beaten”; from 1 = completely disagree to 9 = completely agree). The latter item was removed due to low item-total correlation. After reversing when necessary, higher scores indicated greater attribution of responsibility (α = .66).

We assessed participants’ willingness to report the IPV episode and support the victim by asking participants to imagine being possible neighbors of the victim and indicate to what extent they would engage in each of the following eight possible behaviors: “Reporting the case to the police”; “Refer the victim to a shelter”; “Talk about what had happened with the victim’s relatives, even though you don’t know them”; “Not interfere with partners’ questions”; “Offer help and support to the victim”; “Face directly the victim’s partner, asking explanations for his violent behavior”; “Stay out from what has happened as these are private issues, and no interference should take place”; “Talk with other neighbors about what had happened” (from 1 = absolutely not to 9 = absolutely yes; Baldry et al., 2015; Baldry et al., 2013). The latter item was detrimental for the reliability of the scale; thus, it was discarded. The final index, created by averaging participants’ answers to the remaining seven items after reversing when necessary, was internally consistent (α = .78).

To control for participants’ relevant sexist beliefs, the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) was included. This is a widely used scale consisting of 22 items (e.g., “Women exaggerate problems at work”; “A good woman should be set on a pedestal”; from 1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree; α = .86).

Completing the paper-and-pencil questionnaire required approximately 25 min, after which participants were thanked, debriefed, and signed a consent form to use their data for scientific purposes.

Results

Differences in the degrees of freedom are due to instances of missing data. Even though it was not possible to consider participants’ gender as a factor, because of the unbalanced sample, we controlled for gender in all of the following analyses. Thus, we computed an ANCOVA for each dependent variable, covarying out participants’ gender.

Evaluations of the Victim

The ANCOVA conducted on the evaluation of the victim’s morality showed that gender was a significant covariate, F(1, 104) = 5.77, p = .02, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .05. In line with prediction, the effect of the experimental condition was reliable, F(1, 104) = 38.99, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .27. Participants evaluated the victim as less moral in the admission of infidelity condition (M = 4.49, SD = 1.76) than in the not admission condition (M = 6.59, SD = 1.62). With regard to the victim’s competence, participants’ gender emerged as a marginally significant covariate, F(1, 103) = 3.53, p = .06, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03, but no differences emerged due to the experimental condition, F(1, 103) = 0.12, p = .73, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .001 (admission of infidelity condition: M = 5.50, SD = 1.71; not admission condition: M = 5.67, SD = 1.45). Finally, with regard to the evaluation of the victim’s sociability, participants’ gender was not a reliable covariate, F(1, 104) = 0.09, p = .76, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .001, while a marginal effect of condition emerged, F(1, 104) = 3.26, p = .07, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03. Participants evaluated the victim as slightly more sociable in the admission condition (M = 6.75, SD = 3.69) than in the not admission condition (M = 5.78, SD = 1.36). These results supported H1 and further showed that admission of infidelity impacts the moral rather than a more general evaluation of the victim.

Attribution of Responsibility to the Victim

Participants’ gender emerged as a significant covariate in the ANCOVA, F(1, 104) = 14.97, p < .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .13. In line with H2, a significant effect of the experimental condition emerged for victim’s responsibility, F(1, 104) = 7.89, p = .006, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .07; Participants deemed the victim more responsible for the violence in the admission of infidelity (M = 3.41, SD = 1.83) than in the not admission condition (M = 2.49, SD = 1.21).

Willingness to Report the IPV Episode and Support the Victim

Participants’ gender did not emerge as a significant covariate, F(1, 104) = 2.44, p = .12, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02. The ANCOVA revealed a marginal effect of condition, F(1, 104) = 3.14, p = .08, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03. Surprisingly, we found that participants were slightly more willing to report the IPV episode and support the victim when she had admitted infidelity (M = 6.55, SD = 1.42) than when she had not (M = 6.13, SD = 1.31).

Mediation Analysis

We then conducted a mediation analysis to test whether the effect of condition (coded as 0 = not admitting infidelity, 1 = admitting infidelity) on the willingness to report the IPV episode and to support the victim herself was mediated by the moral evaluation of the victim and by the attribution of responsibility to her. We followed the procedure described by Hayes (2013) for estimating indirect effects. Participants’ sexism (b = –.12, p = .47) and gender (b = –.06, p = .85) were considered as covariates in the model. According to the rationale described above, the moral evaluation of the victim and the attribution of responsibility were modeled as sequential mediators (Process Model Number 6), assuming that admission of infidelity would have elicited a negative moral evaluation, and this, in turn, would have induced an attribution of responsibility. This order reflects also the order in which the two constructs were assessed in the questionnaire.

The overall equation was significant, R² = .15, F(5, 101) = 3.59, p = .005. As shown in Figure 1, a victim admitting infidelity elicited a negative moral evaluation, and this, in turn, led participants to attribute her higher responsibility for the suffered violence. This internal attribution of responsibility, then, made participants less willing to help and support the victim. Supporting H4, a bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 resamples showed that the indirect effect of the experimental condition on participants’ willingness to help and support the victim through the hypothesized causal chain was significant (b = –.08, confidence interval [CI] = [–0.2361, –0.0121]).

Figure 1.

Mediation model in which the effects of admitting (vs. not admitting) infidelity on participants’ willingness to help and support the victim are mediated by the moral evaluation of the victim and attribution of responsibility to her.

Discussion

Despite IPV continues to be a problem affecting millions around the globe, a relevant percentage of cases remain not only unreported to authorities but also unnoticed to people close to the victims, including relatives, friends, and neighbors (WHO, 2013). Several explanations are behind bystanders’ loafing and their unwillingness to intervene in favor of the victims, including the ambiguity of some situations, sexist and misogyny beliefs, or blaming the victim, to mention a few. In this article, we looked at how potential bystanders interpret the situation they are witnessing and how this interpretation elicits their willingness to intervene or not in support of the victim. We looked at how moral evaluation affects attribution of responsibility and how this relates to behavioral intentions in favor of the victim. In particular, our findings showed that when a victim (woman) violated what could be considered gender-role expectations (i.e., committing adultery), participants evaluated her as more immoral, more responsible for the IPV from her husband than when she had not committed adultery. This attribution of responsibility decreased bystanders’ willingness to help and support the IPV victim.

Previous studies showed how other attitudes toward the victim (i.e., infrahumanization; Baldry et al., 2015) or beliefs related to the culture of honor (Baldry et al., 2013; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996; Vandello & Cohen, 2003) may influence bystanders’ willingness to intervene, even in contrast with the rule of law. The present one added to this line of research useful findings to understand why bystanders may or may not help female IPV victims, focusing on the peculiar role of moral evaluations in guiding the bystanders’ interpretation of the situation, nicely complementing our understanding of helping behavior. These factors have nothing to do with an alleged crime committed (IPV) and are extralegal (Baldry & Winkel, 1998; 2008) but yet they are used by laypeople as well as by professionals to formulate a judgment, whether is on credibility, attribution of responsibility, or in acting in favor and support of the victims. This leads to secondary victimization that can make the distal consequences even worse. Intervention programs, trainings, and awareness campaign should better focus on bystanders’ biased beliefs, making people aware that individual thoughts should not interfere with understanding seriousness of an antisocial behavior such as IPV is. In this vein, for example, support networks may help IPV victims to reestablish their image as persons deserving of moral treatment both in the eyes of others and in their own self-views.

There are some limitations to this study that should be discussed. First, our manipulation relied on a simulation that evokes bystanders’ imagined reactions: Despite these do not represent true behaviors, a wide corpus of studies witness the goodness and appropriateness of this manipulation (among others, Baldry et al., 2015; Baldry & Pagliaro, 2014; Baldry et al., 2013; Pacilli et al., 2017; Seelau & Seelau, 2005), and indeed this is one of the most common way to study bystanders’ behavior. Second, we chose a convenience sample of students, and this calls into question the necessity of a more heterogeneous composition to be adopted in future research. Such a more heterogeneous sample could take into account how the pattern of results we presented here may be moderated by differences in terms of socioeconomic status (for instance, between the victim and the bystanders) or gender. With regard to this latter factor, although we could not directly test the effects by gender, because of the unbalanced composition of the sample, we did control for the gender in all of the analyses. Indeed, gender emerged as a significant covariate for the victim’s judgment of morality and competence and for attribution of responsibility to the victim herself. Thus, future studies should consider more balanced samples, to deepen the examination of the moderator role of gender. Moreover, differently from previous research, we did not detect the direct effect of the experimental condition on participants’ willingness to help and support the victim. Nevertheless, the indirect path showed that the victim’s admission of adultery affects the bystanders’ evaluations, and this, in turn, produces the anticipated bystanders’ loafing. Finally, future research could improve the assessment of the attribution of responsibility to the victim, given that the measure we presented here showed a less than perfect Cronbach’s alpha.

Overall, this study confirms that moral evaluations are crucial even in the field of IPV, playing a leading role in attributional processes and behavioral tendencies, and opens the line for new and intriguing research questions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Daniela Arieta and Danila Abbattista for their help in data collection.

Authors’ Note

All the authors contributed to develop the present research and to write the paper. Stefano Pagliaro and Valeria Amata Giannella collected and analyzed the data.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Stefano Pagliaro

Author Biographies

Stefano Pagliaro is an associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Imaging, and Clinical Sciences at the University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. His main research interests are in the area of morality, prejudice, violence against women, and social influence.

Maria Giuseppina Pacilli is an associate professor in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Perugia, Italy. Her main research interests are in the area of dehumanization, morality, sexism, and gender discrimination.

Valeria Amata Giannella is a PhD student in the Department of Neuroscience, Imaging, and Clinical Sciences at the University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Her main research interests are in the area of ethical leadership, reputation, and morality.

Ilaria Giovannelli is a PhD student in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Perugia, Italy. Her main research interests are in the area of dehumanization and morality.

Federica Spaccatini is a postdoc researcher in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Perugia, Italy. Her main research interests are in the area of dehumanization, morality, sexualization, sexual objectification, and gender discrimination.

Anna Costanza Baldry is full professor in the Department of Psychology at the Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” Italy. Her main research interests are in the area of violence against women, bullying, and morality.

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