The Blame Game: What Our Views on Domestic Violence Reveal About Us
One of the goals of this blog is to pull back the curtain on some of the research I’ve conducted over the course of my career: projects that, while sitting quietly in academic journals, might actually speak volumes about our everyday assumptions, biases, and blind spots. I want to start with the first major research project I ever did, which began way back in undergrad, evolved through graduate school, and... after a very long journey…was finally published in Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice in 2021. It's about domestic violence, more specifically how we assign blame when we hear about it, and what that says about us.
Why We Blame—and Why It Matters
The original spark for this research came from my clinical work in Rhode Island. In my undergraduate and early graduate work, I had been working with a local police department and with Day One, one of the state’s sexual assault and trauma resource center. I saw firsthand how often the way people talk about domestic violence, even with the best intentions, can reflect assumptions that are unhelpful…or worse, harmful.
This topic touches on an important area of social psychology known as attribution theory—the way we explain why things happen, especially when they go wrong. Ultimately, humans are constantly focused on other people, thinking about what other people are doing and why, it is a core element of who we are as the “social creature”. However, just because we are near obsessed with it, it doesn’t mean we are particularly good at assessing other people’s motivation and actions. Because of this, we are prone to a number of cognitive failings and biases. I’ll talk about many of these in a future post, but in this case there’s a big error that I want to discuss: the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). This error (literally the fundamental error we make), is that we are more likely to attribute a person’s behavior to internal characteristics (their traits, intelligence, skill) rather than external factors like the situational issues. So, when we see our coworker Bob show up late to work, we assume they did it because of his character (he’s lazy, dumb, not a “team player”) rather than considering external or situational explanations (traffic was bad today). Indeed, this goes another layer: we usually have the opposite view on ourselves! We will always look for situational or external factors that explain our bad behavior rather than thinking that it could be a character flaw.
When it comes to domestic violence, this gets even more complicated. Victims are often blamed for their own victimization. People ask questions like, Why didn’t she leave? or Why did she go back? Meanwhile, perpetrators are sometimes excused because they were drunk, stressed, or provoked. All of these assumptions are powerful. They shape whether people report abuse, whether communities support survivors, and how the criminal justice system responds.
Measuring the Blame
To investigate this these blame attitudes with domestic violence, I used an instrument called the Domestic Violence Blame Scale (DVBS), developed by Petretic-Jackson and colleagues in the 1990s. The DVBS asks participants to rate agreement with statements that reflect four types of blame attribution:
Victim Blame (e.g., “She must have done something to provoke him.”)
Perpetrator Blame (e.g., “He should be held fully responsible for his actions.”)
Situational Blame (e.g., “Stress or alcohol caused the violence.”)
Societal Blame (e.g., “Violence on TV makes people more aggressive.”)
I administered this scale to over 450 participants in total, including college students from both public and private universities, and 92 police officers across multiple departments in a Northeastern state. The findings were compelling.
What We Found: College Students
Among college students, gender played a significant role in how blame was assigned. Male students were more likely to blame victims and less likely to blame perpetrators than female students. They also tended to rate police as more effective at handling domestic violence than their female peers. Interestingly, students from a private college, who generally came from more affluent and less diverse backgrounds, were more likely to assign both victim and perpetrator blame than students from a public college. They also scored higher on societal blame and lower on situational blame, and they rated the police as less effective. This surprised me. We often assume that more privileged or educated populations will hold more progressive views, but the data showed otherwise. One possible reason: private college students were significantly less likely to have witnessed or experienced domestic violence, and prior exposure seemed to make a big difference. Students who had personal or secondhand experience with domestic violence tended to view the police as less effective. Those who had been victims themselves showed higher situational blame, perhaps reflecting their awareness of how complex and nuanced these situations can be. It’s a reminder that personal experience often reshapes our judgments, but not always in the way you’d expect.
What We Found: Police Officers
Police officers, predictably, saw things differently than college students. Compared to students, they had significantly lower levels of perpetrator blame and societal blame. That’s important: the very people charged with responding to domestic violence incidents were less likely to see systemic or cultural causes and less likely to blame perpetrators fully. At the same time, police did not differ significantly from students in their victim-blaming scores. This was both surprising and concerning. Given the central role law enforcement plays in determining outcomes in domestic violence cases—from arrests to prosecution to survivor safety—their attribution styles matter a great deal. However, there was one hopeful finding: police officers who voluntarily attended extra training on domestic violence had significantly lower victim-blaming scores than those who only completed the mandatory sessions. Further, officers who reported paying more attention during trainings also tended to blame victims less. This suggests that training works, at least in reducing harmful assumptions. The caveat, of course, is that it’s correlational—we can’t say whether the training changed their minds or whether more empathetic officers were simply more likely to seek it out.
Why This Matters
Despite increased attention to domestic violence in recent decades, including legal reforms and public awareness campaigns, blame attribution still plays a major role in shaping how we perceive these cases, and how they’re handled. Research shows that blaming the victim decreases the likelihood they’ll report abuse or seek help (Policastro & Payne, 2013). It also affects public support for funding shelters, legal reforms, and preventive education. And as we’ve seen, even professionals tasked with responding to these incidents bring their own biases to the table. It’s not that blame, in and of itself, is evil. It’s part of our cognitive makeup. We want explanations, especially for something as emotionally charged as interpersonal violence. But if those explanations reflect outdated, harmful myths, they can do real damage.
Reflecting on the Methods
It’s important to acknowledge the limitations of the study. The Domestic Violence Blame Scale was developed in the 1990s, and while still valuable, its gendered wording (always male perpetrator, female victim) may skew perceptions or fail to capture the full picture of intimate partner violence in today’s world. The same goes for its neglect of LGBTQ+ dynamics, female-perpetrated violence, or mutual aggression in relationships. Additionally, the samples lacked diversity: the college population was overwhelmingly white, and we didn’t collect gender or ethnicity data for police officers due to confidentiality concerns. The results, while striking, should be interpreted with caution. The study was also conducted before the #MeToo movement gained cultural prominence. Since then, public conversations about gender, violence, and power have changed dramatically. I would be curious to revisit these findings now and see how they’ve shifted, if at all.
So, What Do We Do With This?
First, we need to challenge ourselves, students, professionals, and the public alike, to examine our assumptions about domestic violence. When you hear about an incident, do you look for reasons to excuse the perpetrator? Do you find yourself questioning the victim’s choices? If so, why?
Second, training matters. If we want better outcomes, we need to invest in continuing education, not just for police officers, but for everyone who plays a role in responding to domestic violence. The data here are clear: exposure to thoughtful, evidence-based information can shift attitudes.
Third, let’s complicate the narrative. Victimhood isn’t simple. Violence doesn’t occur in a vacuum. When we talk about these topics, we need to move beyond “good guy/bad guy” binaries and explore the social, psychological, and situational complexities at play so that we can understand and prevent violence.
Final Thoughts
This research started as an undergrad project scribbled out in the psych department at Rhode Island College. It evolved over years and multiple revisions, and it remains one of the most important pieces of work I’ve done. Not because it offers all the answers, but because it raises the right kinds of questions. So much of forensic psychology is about understanding human behavior in extreme contexts. But sometimes, what matters most is understanding our everyday thinking, those snap judgments we make without even realizing it. That’s where change begins.
Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts about how society handles domestic violence, or how you’ve seen attitudes change (or not) over time, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s keep the conversation going.
References available upon request or can be found in the published article:
Gamache, K. (2021). Domestic violence blame attributions of police officers and college students. Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice, 16(2), 272–285. https://apcj.shsu.edu/journal/index.php?mode=download&item=171&open=16-2-8Gamache.pdf
