Sociological theories of interpersonal violence

Violence can mean many different things to different people. The term violence can be used precisely or vaguely and can take many different forms including physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, emotional, social, spatial and financial abuse. This makes it very difficult to find a definition of violence that works for all situations and at all times. Therefore “violence, what is meant by violence, and whether there is a notion of violence at all, are historically, socially and culturally constructed” (Hearn 1998: 15). What is named as violent in one situation may not be named as violent in another; therefore violence is both historically and culturally specific.

There are many different theories as to why men are more violent than women. These theories include biological theories, which focus on hormonal patterns and aggression; psychological theories, which focus on personality types and disorders; psychoanalysis, which looks at “projection and displacement” and sociological theories, which focus on “concepts grounded in interpersonal, collective, institutional, structural or societal processes” (Hearn 1998: 17).

Biological theories propose that women are naturally less violent than men. Maccoby and Jacklin (1975) describe how women display aggression and interpersonal responses which are different to that of men, which mean that situations are usually resolved without incurring violent behaviour. Biological theories of how violence ‘naturally occurs’ rely on explanations of differences between male and female chromosomes, hormones, genetics and territoriality.

During research in the 1960s biologists found a number of genetic abnormalities in the cells of humans. As Ainsworth (2000) describes, one of these abnormalities was a condition which was labelled XYY.

Get quality help now

Marrie pro writer

Verified

Proficient in: Aggression

5 (204)

“ She followed all my directions. It was really easy to contact her and respond very fast as well. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

The name came from the discovery that a small proportion of males had an extra Y chromosome (males normally have one X and one Y chromosome, hence XY). This meant that the men with XYY had double male chromosomes, an abnormality which became nicknamed the ‘supermale syndrome’. The ‘syndrome’ became associated with violent crime as it was claimed that these men were twice as aggressive and violent than the average male (Price et al. 1966 and Jarvik et al. 1973 Cited in Ainsworth 2000). However, later research showed that while XYY males were more likely to be involved with crime they were not necessarily more likely to be involved with specifically violent crimes (Witken at al. 1976 Cited in Ainsworth 2000).

Some biologists suggest that human aggression is hereditary. As Ainsworth (2000) describes, one way of examining this claim is through the studies of twins. Identical twins have identical genetic make-up, so if aggression is hereditary then both twins should, in theory, display identical levels of aggression. However from studies carried out of identical twins that are brought up in different environments it has been shown that they often display different levels off aggression and therefore theorists have suggested that levels of aggression are much more closely related to environment rather than genetic make-up.

Biological explanations are highly criticised for neglecting ideas of power, cultural and historical relativity and morality. Psychological explanations, on the other hand, “locate explanation in mind, mental process’s that transcend sex/gender or nature of the male of masculine psyche” (Hearn 1998: 20).

However, both biological and psychological explanations are criticised because they “don’t address interrelations of body and society, and of body, mind and society.” (Hearn 1998: 20). This leads us to the psychoanalytical explanations of violence which include “intrapsychic conflict, personality disorders, denial mechanisms, developmental deficiencies/impaired ego, narcissism, traumatic childhood, machoism” (Dankwort 1992-3 cited in Hearn 1998: 21).

Through the psychoanalytical perspective it is not violence that is the focus of attention, but instead the dynamics of violence which are more closely considered. Hearn (1998) describes how Freudian and Neo-freudian theorists believe that violence is internally driven, in other words violence is located inside a person. Freud describes how ‘exaggerated masculinities’ cause men to act violently to compensate for their fears of femininity and of women taking control. Chodorow (1978 cited in Hearn 1998) goes on to explain how the development of a rigid ego is created by men to cope with separation from their mother and the absence of their father. This rigid ego derives from notions of how to be a ‘man’ which involves the idea of the need to be aggressive in order to show masculinity.

However psychoanalytical theories are criticised for placing too much blame on the victim. For example, in the case of domestic violence it is suggested that women ‘let it happen’ because of treatment they received as children. Because of this psychoanalytical theories are often labelled as “not feminist” or “antiwoman”. (Hearn 1998: 21). Despite this, psychoanalytical explanations remain very powerful and influential in the social sciences, although more socially located theories have become increasingly significant.

Socially located theories suggest then it is men with social dispositions, not psychological dispositions who are prone to violence (Hearn 1998). There are various socially located theories which include the Social Learning Theory, Socialization and Cognitive-Behavioural Analysis. All of these are based on the same basic idea that men’s violence is behaviour which men learn.

Although psychoanalytical theories suggest that observing other people committing violence or even expressing one’s anger in a non-violent way may actually reduce violence in a person, this is not the case in sociological explanations where it is believed that violence is externally derived. Sociologists argue that violent behaviour can be closely related to an individual’s socialization, namely through learning theories. Jones (2000) describes how there is a possibility that the expression of some violent behaviour is causally connected to either observation or experience of aggression. He discusses how “human behaviour is based on learned experiences rather than instinct or some other innate characteristic” (Jones 2000: 49).

One of the best-known sociological theories of socialization is Sutherland’s theory of differential association (Sutherland 1947 cited in Jones 2000). He argues that cultural, in this case delinquent, behaviour is learnt through interaction with others. Most people come into contact with both law-breaking people and law-abiding people, but it is when a person has more contact with the law-breakers that they become delinquent.

Ray (2000 cited in Hearn 1998) describes how the “crisis of masculinity” could also be a causal factor of male violence. The crisis of masculinity refers to, amongst other things, increasing unemployment combined with increasing women’s equality. Due to unemployment young men or ‘lads’ begin spending more time on the street, (they don’t want to go home as they believe that home is the woman’s place) and so have more chance to commit crime. ‘Real manhood’ is based on devotion to group membership, particularly that of street gangs. These gangs or “subcultures” (Hearn 1998: 30) use violence as a way of confirming status in street culture and so encourage young men to act aggressively and violently.

Sutherland’s theory of differential association (1947 cited in Jones 2000) becomes clear in Ray’s (2000 cited in Hearn 1998) connection between ‘real manhood’ and male violence; a person becomes violent because of stronger exposure to people who commit violence than those who don’t, through association with other violent males on the streets.

The social learning theory outlines the idea that violence is observed and then reproduced or imitated and focuses on past experiences, especially from childhood (Hearn 1998). According to social learning theorists early experiences in the childhood form a persons personality, basically if a child witness’s a parent being violent they are more likely to be violent themselves, even if it does not become obvious until later in their adult life. However social learning theorists also accept that if children witness violence being used as a punishment then they are less likely to copy, and therefore will be deterred from violence (Bandura 1973; 1977). Children develop ‘learned’ patterns of violence through intergenerational relations (Hearn 1998; Hoffman et al 1994; Ainsworth 2000).

However the exact process of learning violence is often less clear and there is a divide between theorists who believe that individuals learn through cognitive structuring, personality formation, behavioural reinforcement and modelling (Jones 2000; Hearn 1998).

Cognitive-behavioural analysis looks at particular forms of learning that have taken place for particular individuals and how reproduction of violence occurs through intergenerational learning and socialization. Goldstein (1989:124 cited in Hearn 1998) identifies the three main areas in which aggression is learned: in the home, school and the mass media. He theorises that learning is either direct through individual practice of aggression or indirect through observation of people being rewarded for aggressive behaviour.

Hotaling and Sugarman (1986) suggest that men who are violent to their wives were traumatized as children, either through being abused themselves or through witnessing abuse of their mother by their father, again focusing on the intergenerational production of violence.

Bandura (1973; 1977), a major proponent of Social Learning Theory, combined aspects of behaviourism and cognitive psychology. He argued that people learn their behaviours not only through the idea of rewards and punishments achieved through certain types of behaviour but also through observing other people’s actions. By doing this “individuals can learn to anticipate the effectiveness of particular courses of action in achieving desired goals” (Jones 2000: 51; Hoffman at al 1994).

To reinforce his theory Bandura conducted an experiment involving a ‘Bobo doll’ (Bandura 1973; 1977). In this experiment, he had some children witness an adult aggressively attacking a plastic clown called the ‘Bobo doll’. The children watched a video where a ‘model’ aggressively beat up a doll. In order to frustrate the children, after the video they were placed in a room with attractive toys, but they could not touch them. Then the children who had watched the video and some other children who had not witnessed the violence, were led to another room where there were identical toys to those used in the Bobo video. Bandura found that the children exposed to the aggressive model were more likely to act in physically aggressive ways than those who were not exposed to the aggressive model (Ainsworth 2000; Bandura 1973; Bandura 1977; Hoffman et al 1994; Jones 2000).

However there are also many criticisms of these theories as the exact process of how social learning or socialization takes place is often unclear and often represent a very simple explanation of how violence happens and is reproduced. Hearn (1998: 27) also claims that there is an “under theorization of gender” amongst the socially located theories. Certain questions such as ‘why don’t girls copy violence like boys do?’ and ‘why do boys understand and imitate the violence of men but not the violation of women?’ are extremely important issues which are not addressed in these explanations of male violence.

Another set of theories which attempts to explain why men are more violent than women are reactive theories, which can be either psychological or sociological in focus. Reactive theories are based on the idea that violence is a response to external conditions, men use violence when their goals are blocked and non-violent alternatives are ineffective (Hearn 1998).

The ‘stress theory’ suggests that certain factors such as low income, unemployment, part time employment and a large number of children are more likely to cause stress to men which can make them more prone to violence. Despite this, it would be unfair to isolate stress as a causal factor of violence because it is a constant feature of everyday life which everyone, both men and women, have to deal with. Another criticism of this theory is that if stress is a single causal factor of violence then why is it mainly men and not women whoare violent? (Hearn 1998).

Reactive theories also look at the abuse of alcohol as an exernal factor, and how this can cause men to act violently. However as Horsfall (1991) outlines alcohol cannot be seen as a direct cause of violence. She concludes that if alcohol is a causal factor of violence, why do some men react violoently when others do not and why does the social structuring of ‘boys’ and ‘men’ bring them up to think that in order to feel like a ‘man’you must drink with the ‘boys’, often to excess.

The construction of gender is a very useful starting point to understand why men are more violent than women. As Moore (1994) writes, discourses about gender construct women and men as different sorts of persons. Discourse that is used to describe men is active; men are portrayed as “aggressive, thrusting and powerful” (Moore 1994: 138). Whereas discourse that describes women is usually passive; women are portrayed as essentially “powerless, submissive and receptive” (Moore 1994: 138). However, these constructions actually only have the most peripheral relation to the behaviours of individual women and men.

Moore (1994) goes onto describe how discourses “engender women and men as persons who are defined by difference”(Moore 1994: 139). They produce discursive effects which produce gender difference, therefore producing symbolic or culturally constructed categories of women and men as different from each other.

The discourse used to conceptualize violence is also very important as it often tends to take the focus, blame and responsibility away from the man who commits the violence and pushes it towards ‘the family’. Phrases such as ‘domestic violence’, ‘conjugal violence’, ‘marital violence’ and ‘family violence’ are often used and although it is “important to acknowledge the relational nature of gender and relational context of violence… it is equally important not to reduce violence to the product of ‘the relationship'” (Hearn 1998: 28).

So far we have identified that, according to socially located theories, violence is produced and reproduced through learning, socialization, modelling and imitation, and this can be “conceptualized as producing an environment of violence which operates over time” (Hearn 1998: 29), for example intergenerational violence. Cultural theorists go on to discuss how these environments can be thought of as a ‘culture’ with norms and values, or a ‘system’ with systematic characteristics. They shift the focus away from the individual to take into consideration social relations and raise important issues such as “cycles of violence”, whereby the victimiser may once have been the victim themselves (Geffner 1989: 107).

Multi causal explanations of violence are very important and claim that violence is a result of not just one individual force, but numerous factors working together. Multi causal theorists bring all, or at least some, of the theories I have already discussed together. Edleson et al (1985) put forward a multicausal explanation where they combine: ideas of violence in the man’s family origin from the social learning theory; personal characteristics, such as an individuals attitudes and ideas towards violence taken from the psychoanalytical approach; the use of substances as an external force from the reactive theory; and they also condsider the context of violence by looking at demographic and relationship variables and specific violent events from a mans past.