Narrowed Vision: Clarity and Clouds in Victims of Family Violence

• NCJ Number: 111947
• Author(s): J Blackman
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 19 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper presented at the Third Family Violence Research Conference, 1987, Durham, New Hampshire.

Annotation

This paper proposes a theory that victims experience a perceptual narrowing relative to nonvictims in their attributions of the causes for problems in abusive intimate relationships that focuses on the abuser and excludes alternatives and other contributory factors.

Abstract

A study of 60 men and women who had been victims of spousal abuse, child abuse, rape by an intimate, or a combination of these and 46 nonvictims indicated that victims were more likely to attribute the causes of violence to the personality of the abuser, while nonvictims were likely to attribute problems to external stressors. Compared to nonvictims, victims were more likely to see no alternatives to enduring the abuse and were likely to have more reasons for the perceived lack of alternatives. Interviews with 10 battered women who had ended the abusive relationship and 10 who had killed their abusers indicated that the latter group had experienced more severe violence, death threats, and a more frequent association between substance abuse and violence. They also were more likely to report that the relationship completely dominated their lives and felt less independent and self-sufficient. Two cases in which abused women killed their abusers, and in which the author provided expert testimony, are included to illustrate how repeated abuse contributes to the proposed perceptual narrowing in victims' attributions. 4 tables and 4 references.