Early-life risk for domestic violence perpetration: Implications for practice and policy

Research on risks and causes of domestic violence is hampered by a policy framework that not only does not fund but in some cases suppresses inquiry into those causes. This discussion, then, will be placed in the context of those policy frameworks that hamper and distort inquiry. This includes an overview of ideological, political, and historical issues that have shaped those frameworks. Related explanatory theories and theories of practice are summarized. The article will examine known early-life risk factors for those disorders and behaviors associated with domestic violence perpetration. Particular emphasis will be placed on maltreatment and attachment/bonding processes. Framed in broad perspectives of psychosocial theory, risk factors from related literature sources (e.g. general violence and criminality) will be included where risk profiles are substantially similar.     

Evaluating the Benefits and Challenges of Owning a Pet Dog at a Residential Psychiatric Rehabilitation Facility From the Perspective of Staff and Clients

This qualitative study evaluated benefits and challenges of the occupation of owning a communal pet dog living permanently at an adult psychiatric rehabilitation facility. Twenty-three participants (12 staff, 11 clients) completed surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Data were analyzed through multiple coding, member checking, and triangulation. Three major themes emerged: (a) positive emotional experiences, (b) challenges of dog ownership, and (c) supporting engagement in meaningful occupation. While experiences of participant’s were broadly positive, challenges with adopting a dog in its puppy stage of development were acknowledged. A novel finding recognizing positive impacts on the well-being of staff was found.     

The Importance of Community in a Feminist Analysis of Domestic Violence among American Indians

There are over 500 native communities in the United States alone. Although popular conceptions in the majority culture commonly refer to these as a single American Indian group, native communities are in fact extremely diverse and heterogeneous. Issues of gender, class, and power are discussed from a feminist perspective with an emphasis on the diversity among native communities. Available evidence, while sketchy, suggests that male authority, male restrictiveness, and socioeconomic stress are associated with violence, but that the levels of these factors vary widely across native groups. For example, some native tribes practice matrilineal descent while others are patrilineal. This diversity has far-reaching implications for the community context in which domestic violence occurs. An approach that integrates both feminist and community approaches seems best suited to address the problem of domestic violence in native North America.     

Asian Indian Women: Domestic Violence,Mental Health,and Sites of Resilience

ABSTRACT

Culture is foundational to human experiences. As such, different cultural contexts and systems create different realities and lived experiences. Psychological knowledge and experiences within this context are then subject to socio-cultural systems, historical events, the distribution of economic and political power, and privileged positions of people within the system. This article highlights Asian Indian women’s lived experiences with domestic violence and their ways of healing. In particular, we present personal, political, social, and cultural factors that contribute to vulnerability and resilience in Indian women both in India and within the diaspora and note the role of community as an important indigenous source of healing.     

Caring and connectedness in the context of domestic worker employment in South Africa

This study investigated workplace relational connectedness qualities in terms of domestic worker employment in a South African setting. Twenty black female domestic workers were recruited through purposive respondent-driven self-sampling. Participants ranged in age from 27 to 59 years. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to generate the data. An interpretative phenomenological approach was used to foreground the thematic data analysis. Caring and connectedness emerged as the main theme that characterised participants’ positive employment relationships. Identified sub-themes related to participants’ experience of their employment context, work engagement and treatment, psychosocial well-being and communication. The findings are consistent with the broaden-and-build theory which proposes a positive behavioural cycle which results from reciprocal actions.     

DEMAND EQUATIONS FOR QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT FOODS UNDER FIXED‐RATIO SCHEDULES: A COMPARISON OF THREE DATA CONVERSIONS

Concurrent schedules were used to establish 6 hens' preferences for three foods. The resulting biases suggested wheat was preferred over honey‐puffed and puffed wheat, and puffed wheat was the least preferred food. The hens then responded under fixed‐ratio schedules for each food in 40‐min (excluding reinforcer time) sessions, with the response requirement doubling each session until no reinforcers were received. At the smaller ratios, the less preferred the food, the faster the hens' overall response rates (mainly as a result of shorter postreinforcement pauses) and the more reinforcers they received. The relations between the logarithms of the number of reinforcers obtained (consumption) and the response ratio (price) were well fitted by curvilinear demand functions. Wheat produced the smallest initial consumption (ln L), followed by honey‐puffed and puffed wheat, respectively. The response requirement at which the demand functions predicted maximal responding (P_max) were larger for wheat than for the other foods. Normalizing consumption and price, as suggested by Hursh and Winger (1995), moved the data for the three foods towards a single demand function; however, the P_max values were generally largest for puffed wheat. The results of normalization, as suggested by Hursh and Silberberg (2008), depended on the k value used. The parameter k is related to the range of the data, and the same k value needs to be used for all data sets that are compared. A k value of 8.0 gave significantly higher essential values (smaller α values) for puffed wheat as compared to honey‐puffed wheat and wheat, and the P_max values, in normalized standard price units, were largest for puffed wheat. Normalizing demand by converting the puffed and honey‐puffed wheat reinforcers to wheat equivalents (by applying the bias parameter from the concurrent‐schedules procedure) maintained separate demand functions for the foods. Those for wheat had the smallest rates of change in elasticity (a) and, in contrast to the other analyses, the largest P_max values. Normalizing demand in terms of concurrent‐schedule preference appears to have some advantages and to merit further investigation.     

Attachment between humans and dogs

The special relationship that dogs have developed with humans has been studied not only from the social sciences perspective, but also from the perspectives of psychology and human medicine. Recently, in cognitive science, it has been suggested that dogs may have acquired the superior cognitive ability to communicate with humans, particularly using human-like visual cues during evolution, and that emotional bonding has developed between humans and dogs by means of similar social cues. This article discusses the biological aspects of human-dog attachment. Attachment requires the distinction of a specific figure using species-specific social cues and specific responses to the figure, brought about by neuroendocrinological homeostatic functions as well as behavioral aspects. It has been shown that dogs can distinguish a particular human figure (e.g. the owner) and exhibit specific autonomic reactions. Moreover, when dogs gaze at their owners, the latter's urinary oxytocin levels increase after the interaction. This understanding of the biological aspect of interspecies attachment suggests the possible elements that form the basis of cross-species empathy and the development of evolutionary cognitive abilities that may depend on not merely their genetic dendrogram.     

Women's aggression: An African case study

Theories of human aggression tend to emphasize aggression as a male phenomenon. An ecological approach to aggression implies that females ought to be aggressive when confrontation is a viable means of attaining scarce resources. In modern Zambia, intrafemale aggression occurs at the individual and socioeconomic class levels. At the individual level, aggression occurs between women for a specific man or his economic resources both within households and beyond their boundaries. At the class level, elite and poor women combine forces to victimize subelite women. Both levels of aggression involve competition over the scarce resource of socially desirable men and their support. Competition is due to the unequal access of the genders to opportunities for labor-force participation and hence different positions in the stratification system, the desire for hypergamous marriage, marital instability, changing role expectations, and the increased dependency of women on men.     

Domestic violence and mental health in a Dutch community sample: The adverse role of loneliness

The present study explored whether the adverse mental health consequences of domestic violence victimization vary by type of loneliness (i.e., emotional and social loneliness). Participants were drawn from the Dutch city of Rotterdam (N = 7072). Domestic violence victimization, emotional loneliness and social loneliness were associated with self‐reported mental health. In addition, interaction effects were observed between domestic violence victimization and each type of loneliness. Implications for policy practice as well as strengths and limitations of the study were discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

家庭暴力的社会认知心理机制及其防范策略的研究

家庭暴力已成为一个世界性的社会问题,然而我国学者对家庭暴力的研究多集中在现象的描述,原因的探讨和完善立法等方面,因而从社会心理学角度探究家庭暴力的认知机制对揭示家庭暴力的实质具有重要意义。心理学研究指出家庭暴力的产生及其对子女的影响而导致的暴力轮回都是认知结构上的偏差所导致,所以从改变认知结构入手的认知行为疗法将是防止家庭暴力的直接和有效的策略。