📄 social_science

Gendered Perceptions and Social Learning of Intimate Partner Violence: An Exploratory Study of Chinese University Students

This exploratory study of 812 Chinese university students reveals that while physical and sexual violence are widely recognized, coercive control is often overlooked, with attitudes toward intimate partner violence significantly shaped by gender differences, childhood exposure to parental violence, and personal dating victimization.

Original authors: Yanxi Dai

Published 2026-08-06

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Yanxi Dai

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

The Invisible Rules of the Relationship Game

Imagine you are walking into a giant, invisible classroom where the lesson isn't math or history, but "How to Love." In this classroom, the teacher isn't a person, but a mix of your family, your friends, and the stories you've heard your whole life. This is the world of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) research. Scientists in this field are trying to figure out why some people think hitting or yelling is a normal part of a relationship, while others know it's wrong.

To understand this, we need to know about two main ideas. First, there's Social Learning. Think of this like a video game where you learn by watching others. If you grow up watching your parents fight and solve problems by shouting or pushing, you might accidentally download a "script" that says, "Hey, this is how you handle a bad day." Second, there's the idea of Coercive Control. While most people know that punching someone is bad, this concept is about the invisible chains of control—like controlling someone's money, giving them the "silent treatment," or constantly insulting them. It's harder to spot because it doesn't always leave a bruise, but it can still hurt just as much.

Why does anyone care? Because laws can change the rules on paper, but they can't instantly change the rules in our heads. Even if a country passes a law saying "violence is bad," people might still think it's okay if their family or culture taught them otherwise. This study dives into the minds of young adults in China to see what they actually believe about these invisible and visible rules.

The Study: What the Students Thought and Why

This paper is like a giant, digital survey sent out to 812 university students in China. The researcher, Yanxi Dai, wanted to see if these young people could spot the difference between a "normal" argument and actual abuse, and if their own family history changed how they saw things.

The "Spot the Abuse" Game
The students were shown a list of eight different behaviors, ranging from the obvious (like pushing or slapping) to the sneaky (like controlling someone's money or ignoring them for days). They had to decide: "Is this abuse?"

Here is what they found:

The Easy Stuff: Almost everyone agreed that physical violence was bad. About 95.2% of students recognized physical abuse, and 88.7% recognized forced sexual behavior as abuse. It's like everyone knows that breaking a toy is wrong.
The Tricky Stuff: When it came to the invisible stuff, the answers got fuzzy. Only 73.6% recognized verbal abuse (yelling/insults), and just 53.9% saw economic control (controlling money) as abuse.
The "Just a Fight" Trap: The most surprising finding was about quarreling. A huge 92.5% of students said that having a "violent quarrel" or just a regular argument was acceptable in a relationship. Only 21.1% thought quarreling itself counted as abuse. It's as if the students thought, "Oh, fighting is just part of the game," even when it gets ugly.

The Gender Twist
Usually, you might think girls would spot all the abuse and boys would miss it. But this study found a funny twist in the data:

The Boys' Surprise: Male students were actually more likely than girls to say that controlling someone's money was abuse. The researchers suggest this might be because guys are often taught they are the "money managers," so they feel the sting of losing control over their wallet more sharply.
The Girls' Strength: Female students were much better at spotting physical and sexual violence. They were also much less likely to say that hitting or yelling was okay.
The Tolerance Gap: Even though boys were good at spotting money control, they were much more likely to say that physical hitting, yelling, and sexual pressure were "acceptable" in a relationship compared to girls.

The Family Connection (Social Learning in Action)
The study confirmed a big theory: What you see at home, you carry with you.

The Family Mirror: Students who had seen their parents fight violently as kids were more likely to say that violence is okay in their own dating lives. It's like a family heirloom, but instead of a watch, they inherited a bad habit.
The Experience Loop: Students who had been victims of abuse in their own dating relationships were also more likely to say, "Well, maybe it's not that bad." The researchers found that for every step up in how much abuse a student had experienced, their chances of justifying that abuse went up by 18.7%. It's a cycle: if you get hurt and don't leave, you start to think, "Maybe this is just how love works."

What the Paper Says We Can't Be Sure About
The author is careful not to say they have solved the mystery. They point out that because they only asked students once (a "snapshot" in time), they can't prove that family violence caused the bad attitudes for sure—it just suggests a strong link. Also, because they only surveyed students from a few provinces in China, we can't say for sure if this is true for every Chinese person, especially those who aren't in college.

The Big Takeaway
The paper suggests that while China has made laws against domestic violence, the "software" in people's brains hasn't fully updated yet. Young people are great at spotting the big, physical hits, but they are still downloading the old "normal" settings for things like yelling, silence, and money control. The study warns that until we teach young people that all these behaviors are part of a harmful cycle, the cycle will keep spinning.

Technical Summary: Gendered Perceptions and Social Learning of Intimate Partner Violence

Problem Statement
Despite the enactment of China's 2016 Anti-Domestic Violence Law, which legally recognized intimate partner violence (IPV) beyond physical abuse, social norms continue to dictate how violence is recognized and justified. Existing empirical research on IPV attitudes in China is limited, particularly regarding non-physical forms of abuse such as coercive control, economic abuse, and emotional manipulation. Furthermore, while demographic predictors of IPV attitudes (e.g., age, education) have been studied, there is a scarcity of research examining how gender differences and social learning mechanisms—specifically exposure to parental violence and personal victimization—shape the recognition and justification of IPV among Chinese university students. This study addresses these gaps by exploring how young adults in a critical developmental stage perceive and justify various abusive behaviors within the context of Chinese legal and cultural frameworks.

Methodology
This exploratory study utilized an online survey administered in 2024 to 812 university students (aged 18–26) across 18 universities in China, with a demographic composition of 64.7% female and 35.3% male. Participants were recruited via academic networks, university emails, and WeChat groups.

The study employed the following measures:

Exposure to Parental Violence: A 4-item scale assessing childhood exposure to interparental conflict and direct abuse (Cronbach's $\alpha$ = 0.648).
Perception of Domestic Violence: A recognition task where participants identified which of seven behaviors (ranging from economic control to physical aggression) constituted domestic violence.
Justification of IPV: An adaptation of the Intimate Partner Violence Attitude Scale-Revised, asking participants to rate their acceptance of eight conflict-related behaviors (Cronbach's $\alpha$ = 0.610).
Dating Violence Victimization: A 6-item scale measuring the frequency of experiencing abusive behaviors in dating relationships (Cronbach's $\alpha$ = 0.621).

Statistical analysis included Chi-square tests for gender differences, Spearman's rank correlations, and logistic regression models to assess the influence of gender, family violence exposure, and dating victimization on IPV attitudes. The study prioritized Composite Reliability (CR) over Cronbach's alpha to account for unequal item weighting in multi-dimensional scales.

Key Results
The findings reveal a complex landscape of IPV recognition and justification:

Recognition Disparities: There was high recognition of physical abuse (95.2%) and sexual violence (88.7%). However, recognition of coercive control behaviors was significantly lower, with only 53.9% identifying economic control and 43.7% identifying the "silent treatment" as abuse.
Gender Differences in Perception: Contrary to some expectations, male students were significantly more likely than females to identify economic control as abuse ( $p = .001$ ). Conversely, female students were more likely to categorize physical acts (pushing, slapping) and sexual coercion as abusive.
Gender Differences in Justification: Male students demonstrated significantly higher tolerance for justifying various forms of IPV. They were nearly three times more likely to condone compulsive sexual behavior, 2.6 times more likely to condone physical abuse, and 3.15 times more likely to justify verbal abuse compared to female students.
Social Learning Effects: Consistent with social learning theory, both childhood exposure to parental violence and personal dating victimization were potent predictors of IPV justification.
- Each unit increase in dating victimization corresponded to an 18.7% increase in the odds of justifying IPV.
- Each unit increase in parental violence exposure corresponded to a 10.3% increase in justification, indicating intergenerational transmission of violent norms.
Normalization of Conflict: "Quarreling" was rarely identified as abuse (21.1%) but was highly justified (92.5%), suggesting a deep cultural normalization of verbal conflict in relationships.

Key Contributions
The study contributes to the literature by:

Expanding the Scope of IPV: Moving beyond physical and sexual violence to explicitly examine coercive control behaviors (economic and emotional) within the Chinese context.
Clarifying Gender Dynamics: Providing empirical evidence that male students, while more tolerant of physical and verbal aggression, may possess a heightened sensitivity to economic control, potentially due to shifting gender norms regarding financial autonomy.
Validating Social Learning in Dating Contexts: Demonstrating that social learning processes extend beyond family of origin to include personal experiences in dating relationships, where victimization reinforces the normalization of aggression.
Highlighting Cultural Nuance: Identifying that the normalization of quarrels and the under-recognition of non-physical abuse are deeply rooted in cultural attitudes emphasizing familial harmony and conflict tolerance.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that the results highlight a "normalization of psychological and verbal abuse" within Chinese dating culture. It argues that legal reforms alone are insufficient without addressing the socialization processes that perpetuate cycles of harm. The study underscores the necessity for public health interventions that:

Move beyond condemning overt physical violence to address subtle power dynamics, including economic and emotional control.
Target early family socialization and the intergenerational transmission of violent norms.
Challenge cultural norms that trivialize quarrels and verbal aggression, which serve as precursors to more severe abuse.

The author modestly frames these findings as an exploratory contribution, noting limitations such as the cross-sectional design (preventing causal inference), the specific sample of university students (limiting generalizability to older or non-student populations), and potential social desirability bias in self-reported data. The study concludes that understanding the intersection of gendered socialization, social learning, and cultural norms is essential for effective IPV prevention in China.

The Invisible Rules of the Relationship Game

The Study: What the Students Thought and Why

Technical Summary: Gendered Perceptions and Social Learning of Intimate Partner Violence

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