Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Virus Of Violence, Mattias Allard, Bruce Watt

Bruce Watt

Models explaining the relationship between victimisation and violence typically fail to include any mediation variables to account for the difference between victimised individuals that become violent in adulthood and those that don’t. A model was proposed, using a Gold Coast community sample of 250 individuals (79 males, 138 females, 33 no answer) with a median age 41-45, that violent thoughts (measured as violent fantasies and permissive attitudes towards violence) mediate the relationship between victimisation (measured retrospectively) and aggression. The study controlled for gender and social desirability bias. The model consisted of a distal stage (victimisation and gender), proximal stage (permissive …