Multiple Forms of Early Violent Socialization and the Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence Among Chinese College Students

Introduction

Early violent socialization has consistently been associated with individuals’ acceptance of interpersonal violence in adulthood. However, how particular types of violent socialization during childhood differently influence individuals’ acceptance of interpersonal violence still remains unclear. The current study examined the effect of multiple types of violence socialization on acceptance of interpersonal violence among Chinese college students in Hong Kong. Based on theoretical frameworks and previous empirical studies, two main research questions were addressed in this study: Research Question 1: Does multiple forms of early violent socialization produce different associations with acceptance of interpersonal violence? Research Question 2: Does gender moderate the relationship between early violence socialization and acceptance of interpersonal violence?

Method

The data for this study came from the International Dating Violence Study (IDVS).  The sample of this data is comprised of 17,404 college students in attendance in 32 nations between 2001and 2006. However, this study was conducted with 874 Hong Kong college students in the IDVS. Multivariate regression analysis (General Linear Model) was conducted to test the association between early violent socialization including abused violence, witnessed violence, and victimized violence and acceptance of violence (RQ1). The moderating effect of gender (RQ2) was examined by introducing and testing an interaction term between early violent socialization and gender in the final multiple linear regression model.

Results

The findings indicated that verbal permission or encouragement from parents toward violence and witnessed experience toward violence during childhood predict the acceptance of violence. On the other hand, the childhood experience of being a violence victim was not significantly associated with the acceptance of violence. In addition, gender moderates the relationship between verbal advice toward violence and acceptance of violence.  More specifically, verbal advice to hit back if someone hit or insulted them was more likely to influence male college students’ perception of the acceptance of violence than female students’ perception. 

Discussion

Our findings indicate that it is critical to provide early intervention efforts to prevent the effect of childhood socialization to violence on the potential attitudes toward and behaviors of interpersonal violence. Thus, this study highlights the need for school social workers, teachers, policymakers, and other individuals who work closely with children to be trained to recognize forms of early socialization to violence. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.