Witnessing Inter-Parental Physical Violence and Physical Dating Violence Perpetration: the Mediating Role of Attitudes Towards Physical Violence

Abstract

Although studies on physical dating violence have mostly been carried out in individualistic, Western cultures, the prevalence rates of physical dating violence among college aged students have been unexpectedly high from the early studies in Turkey as well. The current study therefore investigated physical dating violence in a more collectivist, predominantly Muslim culture. Informed by the theory of social learning theory, it tested attitudes towards physical violence as a potential mechanism that might account for the association between witnessing inter-parental physical violence and physical dating violence perpetration. A sample of 804 dating college students (576 women, 224 men, and four missing) completed the Physical Assault subscale of the Conflict Tactics Scale-Revised, Violence subscale of the Intimate Partner Violence Attitude Scale- Revised, and Physical Assault subscale of the Conflict Tactics Scale Adult Recall Version. Among the current sample (Mage = 21.85; SDage = 2.03; min-maxage = 18-25), 32.1% and 20.5% of the college women and men, respectively, reported to have used physically violent behaviors towards their partners. Two separate mediation analyses performed via PROCESS (Version 2.041; Hayes, 2013) that uses bootstrapping (Preacher & Hayes, 2004) revealed that the indirect effects were both significant. Attitudes towards physical violence mediated the associations between (1) witnessing father to mother physical violence, b = .014, SE = .009, 95% CI = .0017; .0430 and (2) witnessing mother to father physical violence, b = .036, SE = .017, 95% CI = .0133; .0852 and physical dating violence perpetration. Findings are interpreted in light of physical dating violence research, with a focus on universal and culturally specific aspects