The Effect of Witnessing Domestic Violence in Children’s Attributions of Emotion
Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Ph.D., Claudia J. Clayton, Ph.D., Rebecca Nichols, M.S., and Rachel Kramer
May 2007
Poster presented at the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, D.C.
Why is it that children who witness interparental violence (IPV) are more likely to be victims or perpetrators of this devastating form of violence as adults? Drs. Ballif-Spanvill and Clayton and their WRI associates Rebecca Nichols and Rachel Kramer suspected that emotion, which is a known influence on decision making and behavior, could be the culprit.
To test their hypothesis, they showed children videos of conflict situations typical in children’s interactions. The children were then asked how the victims in these situations felt and why the perpetrators acted the way that they did.
The results confirmed that witnessing IPV affects the way children perceive emotions of people in conflict. Children who had witnessed IPV saw the victims’ emotions as more peaceful and the perpetrators’ emotions as more violent than did the children who had not witnessed IPV. In addition, the girls saw victims’ emotions as more peaceful and the perpetrators’ emotions as more violent than did the boys.
There are many possible explanations for the significant differences found in this study, including that children who witness IPV become more sensitive to, or in other words, more affected by, conflict. This sensitization could mean that as adults, these children have more heightened emotions in the inevitable conflicts of marriage, which escalate into violence. More research needs to be done to explore the implications of these findings, but the message to developers of IPV prevention is clear: the education of child witnesses as to appropriate emotions and behaviors in conflict situations must not be neglected.