Religion and intimate partner violence in Chile: Macro- and micro-level influences (original) (raw)
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In recent decades, more studies have emerged that examine the relationship between religion / spirituality, marital functioning and mental health. The scholarship on domestic violence (DV) / intimate partner violence (IPV) and religion does not appear to have integrated this evidence sufficiently and also lacks a multi-sectoral perspective. Ultimately, evidence from psychology and counselling needs to be bridged with evidence from public health and international development programming and studies in anthropology and sociology. A better integration could help to increase understanding of the multidimensional effects of religious parameters in the experience of DV / IPV and to identify how these effects could be leveraged resourcefully in faith-based interventions at community level and in psychosocial counselling involving victims, survivors and perpetrators in religious contexts. The current synthesis is the result of a systematic review that was conducted to start to bridge this m...
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A small but growing literature focuses on the links between religion and family violence. Several recent studies report that regular religious attendance is inversely related to abuse among both men and women. After outlining a series of theoretical arguments regarding possible direct and indirect links between religious involvement and domestic violence, we analyze these relationships using data from Wave 1 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH-1). Among the key findings: (1) regular religious attendance is inversely associated with the perpetration of domestic violence; (2) among men, this protective effect is evident only among weekly attenders, whereas among women, the protective effect also surfaces among monthly attenders; (3) although the estimated net effects of religious attendance are generally somewhat larger in models of self-reports of domestic violence, this link also remains strong and statistically significant in models of partner reports of violence; and (4) moreover, the inverse association between religious attendance and abuse persists even with statistical controls for measures of (a) social integration and social support, (b) alcohol and substance abuse, and (c) low self-esteem and depression. We conclude by discussing a number of implications of these findings, and by identifying several promising directions for future research.
This is a draft and expanded version of the paper that appears with the same title in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2017. In this version personality variables are included and analysis was conducted with the total sample – atheist participants and personality variables were excluded in the published version. Results are similar to the published version but some coefficients are slightly different. Published version also included improvements in English. This study analyzes the association between public religiosity or attendance to collective rituals, private religiosity or praying, and satisfaction with life in a representative sample of the Chilean population. Religiosity was associated to low income and socioeconomic status, being older and female, variables that were negatively associated to satisfaction with life. However, attendance to collective religious rituals was associated to satisfaction with life, while private religiosity was unrelated, supporting that it is the social aspect of religion that benefits well-being. Controlling for gender, age and socioeconomic variables, public religiosity predicts specifically satisfaction with life. Attendance to religious rituals was associated to high social support, low negative and high positive affect, as well as to personality traits of Consciousness and Low Neuroticism, all variables associated to wellbeing. It was also associated to low Extroversion and low positive life events changes and unrelated to negative life events. Mediational analysis that included all variables related to public religiosity (main predictor) and to satisfaction with life (dependent variable) showed that attendance to religious rituals has direct effect on well being and significant indirect effect trough high social support, high positive affect and low negative affect. Results are discussed in the framework of a socio-emotional approach to positive effect of religion on wellbeing and by respect to the role of public rituals in the Chilean collectivistic culture. .
Effect of Religion on Domestic Violence Perpetration Among American Adults
2019
After Hirschi and Stark's Hellfire and Delinquency (1969), researchers have been seeking to determine whether there is a correlational link between religion and crime. This paper seeks to add to the literature by correlating domestic violence with four elements of religion (use of belief to solve everyday problems, prayer frequency, religious importance, and attendance of worship) that correspond with the four elements of Hirschi's social control theory (attachment, commitment, belief, and involvement, respectively) (1969). It also includes male victims of domestic violence among female victims, unlike most previous literature. Using a series of logistic regression models, only attendance of worship, the variable that signified involvement, had statistical significance in any model, which may signify the need to focus more on the behavioral measures of social control theory rather than the attitudinal measures.
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How do religious beliefs, human psychology and domestic violence intersect? Numerous fields offer directions in thinking about this relationship, including the well-established field of spiritual psychotherapy in North America, studies in mental health and spirituality, research that links religious beliefs to attachment models, personality disorders and domestic violence, and studies that look at the role of religious values or Church attendance in marriage, primarily emanating from North America. And yet these three parameters are rarely addressed together in domestic violence interventions. More importantly, their study is disproportionately informed by the contexts and faith traditions of western societies and are not applied to or informed by ethnographic realities in non-western religious communities. There is a need to build the evidence around how religious beliefs combine with personal and interpersonal, psychological parameters to influence human behavior in intimate partnerships and responses to domestic violence in diverse religious communities. This webinar will focus on key insights from a year-long theology-informed ethnographic study of domestic violence with an Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahәdo community in the countryside of Northern Ethiopia which embedded the study of domestic violence realities and attitudes in the local religio-cultural worldview and participants’ lived realities and life stories. The study demonstrated clear associations between individual rationalisations and attitudes towards intimate partner abuse and the participants’ belief systems, as well as the potential of Orthodox theology to counter perceptions of abusiveness conducive to its tolerance by a majority of the population. A closer look at the influence of spiritual parameters on conjugal behaviour suggested that faith was influential in many men’s and women’s married lives, although it was experienced differently and with different implications for each. The study also pointed to interconnections with psychological parameters of violence, suggesting the need for an integrated alleviation approach. Watch the presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHJ32YqcMic&feature=youtu.be
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Domestic violence against women is a pervasive, global health problem. This study investigates the correlates and psychological outcomes of domestic abuse among women in a semi-industrial country. The participants included 215 mothers residing in working-class communities located on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile. We utilized structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis that poverty and other structural inequalities would be related to incidents of domestic abuse in Chile, as they are in the United States. Our results suggest that lower socioeconomic status, even within poor communities, and stressful life events have a direct relationship to domestic conflict. Domestic abuse was, in turn, associated with women's mental health such that greater domestic conflict was related to higher reports of depressive affect and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. The importance of identifying similarities and differences in the occurrence of domestic violence in developing countries as compared to industrialized countries is discussed.