This study experimentally examines the effects of participant sex, perpetrator sex, and severity of violence on perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV) seriousness, sympathy toward the victim, and punishment preferences for the perpetrator. Participants (N = 449) were randomly assigned to a condition, exposed to a composite news story, and then completed a survey. Ratings of seriousness of IPV for stories with male perpetrators were significantly higher than ratings of seriousness for stories with female perpetrators. Men had significantly higher sympathy for female victims in any condition than for male victims in the weak or strong severity of violence conditions. Men's sympathy for male victims in the fatal severity of violence condition did not differ from their sympathy for female victims. Women had the least sympathy for female victims in the weak severity condition and men in the weak or strong severity conditions. Women reported significantly higher sympathy for female victims in the strong and fatal severity of violence conditions. Women's ratings of sympathy for male victims in the fatal severity of violence condition were statistically indistinguishable from any other group. Participants reported stronger punishment preferences for male perpetrators and this effect was magnified among men. Theoretical implications are presented with attention provided to practical considerations about support for public health services.

The ways sexual harassment occurs both online and in face-to-face settings has become more complicated. Sexual harassment that occurs in cyberspace or online sexual harassment adds complexity to the experiences of victims, current research understandings, and the legal dimensions of this phenomenon. Social networking sites (SNS) are a type of social media that offer unique opportunities to users and sometimes the communication that occurs on SNS can cross the line from flirtation into online sexual harassment. Victims of sexual harassment employ communicative strategies such as coping to make sense of their experiences of sexual harassment. The current study qualitatively examined problem-focused, active emotion-focused, and passive emotion-focused coping strategies employed by sexual harassment victims across multiple settings. We conducted 26 in-depth interviews with victims that had experienced sexual harassment across multiple settings (e.g., face-to-face and SNS). The findings present 16 types of coping strategies-five problem-focused, five active emotion-focused, and six passive emotion-focused. The victims used an average of three types of coping strategies during their experiences. Theoretical implications extend research on passive emotion-focused coping strategies by discussing powerlessness and how victims blame other victims. Furthermore, theoretically the findings reveal that coping is a complex, cyclical process and that victims shift among types of coping strategies over the course of their experience. Practical implications are offered for victims and for SNS sites.

The current study is concerned with the different types of gender stereotypes that participants may draw upon when exposed to news stories about intimate partner violence (IPV). We qualitatively analyzed open-ended responses examining four types of gender stereotypes-aggression, emotional, power and control, and acceptability of violence. We offer theoretical implications that extend past research on intimate terrorism and situational couple violence, the gender symmetry debate, and how stereotypes are formed. We also discuss practical implications for journalists who write stories about IPV and individuals who provide services to victims and perpetrators.

Preventing intimate partner violence (IPV) is a public health priority. An important component of designing prevention programs is developing an understanding of how media portrayals of health issues influence public opinion and policy. To better understand the ways in which media images may be informing our understanding of IPV, this study content analyzed portrayals of IPV in news media articles. Stratified media outlets were used to obtain a representative sample of daily newspapers based on their designated market areas. Researchers created constructed months using weeks from each season across a 2-year period. The first part of the study investigated quantitative differences in the coverage of female and male perpetrators (n = 395) and identified several areas where coverage differed. The second part of the study qualitatively examined coverage of female perpetrators (n = 61) to provide a richer description of such coverage. This study contributes to our understanding of female perpetrators and how these portrayals may contribute to the larger gender symmetry debate surrounding female aggressors. Implications for public health policy and research are discussed.

This study examines the intersection of power, professional work, organizing, and emotional deviance at two municipal courthouses in the United States. A variety of qualitative methods including observation, shadowing employees, informal interviewing, and semi-structured respondent interviews were used to collect the data. A total of twelve municipal court judges were observed during arraignments, pre-trial conferences, and trials, and four of these judges participated in member checking interviews for a total of sixteen in-depth, audio-recorded interviews.This article centers on emotional deviance, or the expression of emotion that occurs when employees disregard feeling rules and express emotions that do not align with organizational expectations. In the case of judges who are mandated to be rational and neutral, emotional deviance becomes a distinctive advantage. Furthermore, the findings of this piece suggest that professional work is actually quite emotional and it also introduces the concept of privileged deviance to describe the ways in which deviance is related to power and specific verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors. The article ends by discussing implicit and explicit privileged deviance and offers practical implications related to the training of municipal court judges and the mandates to process cases quickly while still fostering a high level of defendant satisfaction.