Beliefs of Violence-Sensitive and Violence-Tolerant People

Every person views the world through a different lens, and one can never fully understand the motivations and opinions of someone else. However, experiments and statistics can shed some light onto people’s thought patterns and behaviors. When horrific acts of violence occur, many people strive to understand why they happen. Through my study I hope to help solve some of the mysteries behind the different ways people interpret violence. I want to see why some people tend to be more sensitive to violence and why some are more tolerant of violence. I am doing this by building on previous research conducted by Professor Collyer and his colleagues. In their previous studies they analyzed ratings of the severity of various violent acts ranging from life-threatening acts to verbal insults. They found that there are four clusters of violent acts: life threatening acts, low severity physical, high severity nonphysical, and low severity nonphysical. All the participants rated life threatening violence at the same level of severity, but then ratings split into two groups which can be described as: violence sensitive and violence tolerant. The violence-sensitive group had higher ratings of severity for the remaining three clusters of violence than the violence-tolerant group. I have designed a questionnaire which combines the quantitative approach to studying participants used by Professor Collyer, and am taking a qualitative approach by examining the reasons why participants rate these acts of violence with higher ratings or lower ratings. The participants in my study are a group of URI students in a large, introductory psychology course, chosen so as to include a wide variety of students. I am comparing the ratings participants choose for the clusters of violence with their answers to a number of questions about their personal definitions of violence and their attitudes toward crime and punishment. Participants will not only be placed into a group based on their ratings, but will also be asked to identify themselves as either violence-sensitive or violence-tolerant

Individual differences in sensitivity to violence

A survey of university students explored correlates of sensitivity to violence, defined as a person\u27s average rating of the severity of violence of several behaviors. The 79 women were somewhat more sensitive than the 39 men. Sensitivity was associated with the tendency to describe oneself as violence sensitive or violence tolerant, with the person\u27s manner of defining the concept of violence, and with the tendency to include verbal abuse and inaction as possible forms of violence. Sensitivity was not clearly associated with some other variables, such as attitudes toward bullying and acceptability of hunting. The potential utility of measuring sensitivity to violence, and further work suggested by these findings, are discussed. © Perceptual and Motor Skills 2011