In order to analyse the psychological research surrounding victim blame and intimate partner violence (IPV), this report focus on Feminist and Family Violence perspectives and their links to Attribution Theory due to these being the most relevant within this field.
Victim blame is defined as the phenomenon whereby a victim of crime is deemed at least partly responsible by others within society (Grubb & Turner, 2012). Which throughout this report, will be discussed in relation to instances of intimate partner violence (IPV), which according to the official government definition, is; “any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse [psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional] between adults who are or have …show more content…
In an expansion of this research Klenke & Meyer (1990) who cite their use of Rubin & Peplau’s 1975 Belief in a Just World (BJW) Scale alongside mock interviews with alleged rape victims to analyse what type of people are most likely to attribute blame onto innocent victims. The outcome showed that women who scored highly on the BJW scale blamed victims less than women with low scores, whereas men who scored highly saw the victim more negatively. This could be due to the women being more able to identify with the female victim, alongside the consideration that they could be in that situation; a finding which offers further support for Shaver’s (1970) …show more content…
However, this research fails to take into account female-male IPV whilst the reductionist nature classes all men as capable of abusing their partners (Dutton & Nicholls,