Looking at Violence

Through Theoretical
Perspectives
By: Kayla Ebien-Pesa & Brian Conceicao
Learning Objectives
• To inform the class the importance of the different
types of violence that occur every day in this world,
including our own communities, and the strong and
disturbing effects it has on victims.
• To increase the knowledge and competency that we will
need as social workers so that we can all help victims of
violence of all kinds and help stop this deadly situation.
• To gain more knowledge of the two theories we will be
covering, Family Systems Theory and Social Learning
Theory.
What is Violence?
• Violence- is the intentional use of
physical force or power, threatened or
actual, against a person, or against a
group or community, that either results in
or has a high likelihood of resulting in
injury, death, psychological harm,
maldevelopment or deprivation.
Types of Violence:
Physical: Non-Physical:
• Battering • Neglect
• Gun Violence • Verbal Abuse
• Bullying • Emotional Abuse
• Sexual Assault • Cyber Bullying
• Child Abuse • Stalking
Examining the following:
1. Domestic Violence
2. Bullying
3. Child Abuse
History of Family Violence
• In the 1500’s there were no laws against wife-beating
for correctional purposes.
• States tried to lessen this domestic violence by
permitting the husband to use a whip that was no
bigger than his thumb
• Maryland was the first state to pass a law that made
wife-beating a crime in 1882
• Queen Victoria began creating laws that disallowed
women to be under lock and key, life threatening
beatings, and wives and daughters to be sold into
prostitution.

 The Cumbee Center to Assist Abused Persons

History of Family Violence Continued
• If a man performed a domestic violence act he would have to
go to a civil court instead of a criminal court, where he would
never face any harsh punishments, however if the same man
assaulted a stranger he would have to go to a criminal court
where he would suffer a much harsher punishment. (1962)
• Soon the battered women's movement was born in the 1970’s.
• In 1975 most states finally allow wives to bring their abusive
husbands to criminal court.
• In California a bill was finally passed which protected children
from the effects of domestic violence. This bill allowed the
court to remove the battering parent from the household and
prohibiting visitation rights. This was only 14 years ago in 1996.
• Also in 1996 the first National Domestic Violence Hotline is
created.

• Cumbee Center to Assist Abused Persons

 • Physical Abuse – Slapping, kicking,
What is Domestic shoving, hitting, etc.
Violence? • Sexual Abuse – Rape, assault,
conflicting with birth control,
forced prostitution, etc.
• Emotional Abuse – Constant
criticism, shouting, humiliation,
inflicting with the relationship
between mother and children etc.
• Psychological abuse – Stalking,
disturbing or conflicting any
personal relationship they have
with family, friends, co-workers,
etc.
• Economic Abuse - Controlling
victims money, not allowing victim
to use money for basic needs,
and/or damaging the interfering
with the victims credit.

 SafeHorizon.org
 Statistics for Domestic Violence
• According to CrisisPrevention.com domestic
violence is responsible for more individual harm
than muggings, rapes and car accidents each year.
• As many as 324,000 women each year experience
intimate partner violence during their pregnancy.
• On average more than three women and one man
are murdered due to domestic violence each day
• One in 4 (25%) women have experienced domestic
violence in their lifetime.
• Women -85% and men – 15%
• Approximately women and 1000,000 men are
victims of domestic violence each year
What is Bullying
• Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior
among school aged children that involves a real
or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is
repeated, or has the potential to be repeated,
over time. Both kids who are bullied and who
bully others may have serious, lasting problems
• Bullying includes actions such as making
threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone
physically or verbally, and excluding someone
from a group on purpose.

 Stopbullying.gov
Types of Bullying:

1.Verbal Bullying
2.Social Bullying
3.Physical Bullying

 Stopbullying.gov
Verbal Bullying:
• Verbal bullying is saying or writing
mean things. Verbal bullying
includes:
• Teasing
• Name-calling
• Inappropriate sexual comments
• Taunting
• Threatening to cause harm
 Stopbullying.gov
Social Bullying:
• Social bullying, sometimes referred to as
relational bullying, involves hurting
someone’s reputation or relationships.
Social bullying includes:
• Leaving someone out on purpose
• Telling other children not to be friends
with someone
• Spreading rumors about someone
• Embarrassing someone in public

 Stopbullying.gov
Physical Bullying:
• Physical bullying involves hurting a
person’s body or possessions. Physical
bullying includes:
• Hitting/kicking/pinching
• Spitting
• Tripping/pushing
• Taking or breaking someone’s things
• Making mean or rude hand gestures

 Stopbullying.gov
Frequency of Bullying:
• There are two sources of federally collected data on
youth bullying:
• The 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) indicates
that, nationwide, 20% of students in grades 9–12
experienced bullying.
• The 2008–2009 School Crime Supplement (National
Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice
Statistics) indicates that, nationwide, 28% of students in
grades 6–12 experienced bullying.

 Stopbullying.gov
Abuse Involving Children
• 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their
wives also abused their children frequently.
• Slightly more than half of female victims of
intimate violence live in households with
children under the age of 12.
• Studies suggest that between 3.3-10 million
children witness some form of domestic
violence annually
• The United States has the worst record in the
industrial nation.
 ChildHelp (2013) &Child Maltreatment (2010)
 Child Abuse Continued
• Children whose parents abuse alcohol and other
drugs are more likely to be abused. More than four
times likely to be neglected than children for non
abusing families.
• Estimated cost of child abuse and neglect in 2008
was 124 billion.
• Report of child abuse are made every ten seconds.
• 80% of children that die from abuse are 4 and
under.
• 30% of children who were abused will abuse their
own children.
ChildHelp.org (2012).
Types of Child Abuse
• 78.3%: Neglect
• 17.6%: Physical abuse
• 10.3%: Other
• 9.2%: Sexual abuse
• 8.1%: Psychological
• 2.4%: Medical Neglect

 Childhelp.org (2012)
Social Learning Theory:
• How many of you remember growing up
and your parents/caregivers telling you
not to play with_____ because they are a
bad influence.
• Parents/caregivers have been utilizing the
Social Learning Theory as a form of
parenting well before it was ever known
by its present day name.
Social Learning Theory

Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura’s Biography
• Born in 1925 (Small town in Canada)
• 1949 Received his Bachelor's Psychology (3
years)
• 1951 Received his Master’s in Psychology (U.
Iowa)
• 1952 Received his PH. D. in Psychology (U.
Iowa)
• 1961 Conducted well known “Bobo Doll
Experiment”
• 1974 Elected president of the American
Psychological Association
Albert Bandura
• "Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not
to mention hazardous, if people had to rely
solely on the effects of their own actions to
inform them what to do. Fortunately, most
human behavior is learned observationally
through modeling: from observing others one
forms an idea of how new behaviors are
performed, and on later occasions this coded
information serves as a guide for action."
• -Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory, 1977
Ways in which people learn
socially:
In-Person Distance Learning
• Friends • T.V. shows
• Class Room • Movies
• Playground
• Internet (Text
• Group Affiliations
(Girls/Boys Files)
Scouts) • Internet (How to
• Sport Athletes/ videos)
Teams
• Webinars
Social Learning
The Modeling Process:
1.Attention
2.Retention
3.Reproduction
4.Motivation
Social Learning
•Attention- In order to learn, you need to
be paying attention. Anything that detracts
your attention is going to have a negative effect
on observational learning. If the model
interesting or there is a novel aspect to the
situation, you are far more likely to dedicate
your full attention to learning.
Social Learning
•Retention- The ability to store
information is also an important part of the
learning process. Retention can be affected by a
number of factors, but the ability to pull up
information later and act on it is vital to
observational learning.
Social Learning
•Reproduction- Once you have paid
attention to the model and retained the
information, it is time to actually perform the
behavior you observed. Further practice of the
learned behavior leads to improvement and
skill advancement.
Social Learning
•Motivation- Finally, in order for
observational learning to be successful, you have to
be motivated to imitate the behavior that has been
modeled. Reinforcement and punishment play an
important role in motivation. While experiencing
these motivators can be highly effective, so can
observing other experience some type of
reinforcement or punishment. For example, if you
see another student rewarded with extra credit for
being to class on time, you might start to show up a
few minutes early each day.
Social Learning

•Individuals exposed to the same

Situational Stimuli may display completely
different responses depending on that
persons prior experiences to the stimuli
and their current motivational factors

“Once an addict always an addict” is not an

accurate statement based on this theory
Social Learning Theory
• Strengths- Theory can easily account for
inconsistencies in a child's behavior at school
vs. at home ( i.e. a child may not act the same
way due to motivational factors either + or - )
• which suggests that given the right
environment any behavior could be changed.
• Gives an accurate picture of the way behaviors
are learned
Social Learning Theory
• Weakness- Too much emphasis is placed on
what happens to the individual rather than
what that person does with the information.
• Also Theory does not take into account the
actual developmental changes (physical and
mental) that occur as a person matures.
Bobo Doll Experiment
• Conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura
• Children watched a filmed adult perform novel
aggressive acts towards an inflated doll
• Physical aggression was accompanied by novel
hostile remarks
• Model pommelled the doll with mallet
• Flung it in the air
• Kicked it repeatedly
• Threw it down and beat it
Bobo Doll Experiment
• Later they measured how much
of this modeled aggression the
children had learned just by
watching the film
• Measurement uses simulated
targets rather than live ones
Bobo Doll Experiment
• Exposure to aggressive modeling increased
attraction to guns even though it was never
modeled
• Guns had less appeal to children who had no
exposure to the aggressive modeling
• The children also picked up on the novel hostile
language
• Children also devised new ways of hitting the
doll
• Children in the control group never exhibited
the novel forms of aggression
Bobo Doll Experiment

http://youtu.be/Pr0OTCVtHbU
Family Systems Theory

Dr. Murray Bowen

Background and Biography
• January 31-1913- October 9,1990
• Earned B.S degree from the University of Tennessee in
1934 and M.D from University of Tennessee Medical
School in 1937
• Served five years in the army during WWII (1941-1946)
and made his way up from a Lieutenant to a Major.
• His wartime experience resulted in a change of interest
from surgery to psychiatry.
• Began a 5 year research project at the NI of Mental
Health in Maryland, this project involved families with
an adult schizophrenic child living on a research ward
for long periods of time.
• 1975 he founded the Georgetown Family Center, which
he was the director of until his death.
Dr. Murray Bowen
“He has been credited as being one of
those rare human beings who had a
genuinely new idea. He had the courage to
go against the psychiatric and societal
mainstream, to stand up for what he
believed about human behavior. Thank to
his efforts the world has been rewarded
with a new theory of human behavior…”
-The Bowen Center
Family Systems Theory
• Family is seen as a social system
• Family members affect each others thoughts,
feelings, and actions, that it is almost as if they
are living under the same “emotional skin”
• Individual within families are intricately
connected to each other and every experience
one member goes through affects every other
part of the system.

 Thebowencenter.org
 Family Systems Theory
• Today family systems theory is most often and
mainly used by family and marriage counselors.
• They believe that current problems in ones life is
the result of unresolved issues that occurred in the
family of origin.
• Family relationship styles are passed on and on
from generation to generation.
• One of the many questions asked about this system
theory is “Does family systems theory hold an
abused person to be an equal contributor to the
violent relationship?”
8 Interlocking Concepts of
Family Systems Theory
• Triangles
• Differentiation of self
• Nuclear Family Emotion System
• Family Projection Process
• Multigenerational Transmission Process
• Emotional Cutoff
• Sibling Position
• Societal Emotional Process
Family Systems Theory and
Violence
• According to this theory, a partner who is in an
abusive relationship remains in this situation
due to the system’s resistance to change and
need to maintain stability and balance
(Chornesky, 2000).
• Mothers often feel like they are caught in a
cycle of violence, and that leaving an abuser
will only bring harm to the family.
Family Systems Theory and
Violence.
• Since the patterns of family relationships are
passed on from generation to generation and
these unresolved problems are re-enacted in
current relationships, we will not be able to the
statistic stating that 30% of children who are
abused will abuse decrease.
QUIZ!!!!
Question 1:
•I don’t want you playing with
Johnny anymore because he is
a bad influence.
• What type of theory is that
statement based upon?
Question 2:

•Who is the originator of

Family Systems Theory?
Question 3:
•What was the name of the
experiment that Albert
Bandura conducted using
children and their response to
aggressive acts towards an
inflated doll?
Question 4:
•What percent of children
that are abused will most
likely abuse there children
as well?
Question 5:

•There are (4) parts to

the modeling process;
Attention, Retention,
Reproduction,
&_______________ ?
Finally, Question 6:
•Name at least two types of
physical violence and two
types on non physical
violence?
The End!

-Kayla and Brian