“It can’t be that bad, I mean, he’s a guy”

Abstract

This chapter outlines the possible role of social cognition in informing judgements towards incidences of intimate partner violence, before reviewing existing research examining perceptions and judgements of abuse. It also outlines original research in the area exploring judgements towards hypothetical incidents of domestic violence occurring in opposite-sex and same-sex couples, and of differing abuse types. The way the brain decodes and responds to social situations and interactions may be in part responsible for the formulation and subsequent propagation of the “domestic violence stereotype”. Social cognition describes how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations, focusing particularly on the cognitive processes engaged by the brain when making sense of our social world. The stereotype of domestic violence outlined earlier also suggests that such violence is predominantly physical. However, statistics routinely indicate widespread prevalence of other forms of abuse.

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