Do Evaluative Attitudes Towards Violence Influence Violent Behaviour? A Replication and Extension

Recent research suggests that evaluative attitudes towards violence have been overlooked in forensic psychology and may be causally associated with violent behaviour (Nunes, Pedneault, & Hermann, 2019a). The current project extended this research by experimentally testing whether manipulating evaluative attitudes towards violence would influence violent responding. Men from the community were recruited online (N = 526) to read convincing messages designed to make evaluations of violence more positive or more negative and complete a newly developed analogue measure of violent behaviour. The results indicated that making evaluations of violence more negative led to fewer violent responses, whereas the positive manipulation did not result in significantly more positive evaluations of violence or significantly more violent responding. The results suggest a causal relationship between negative evaluations of violence and reduced violent responding, but are inconclusive regarding more positive evaluations of violence. Potential reasons for these patterns are considered.