Toward Understanding the Condonation of Gender Based Violence: The Interaction between patriarchal values and contextual elements

Previous research on the etiology of support for gender-based violence has focused on the role of either core values (such as patriarchal values) or contextual factors (such as the degree to which the woman “violates” gender norms). Little research has put these two analytical strains together. Our purpose here is to investigate how patriarchal values interact with the contextual elements of an experimental vignette, applied to a representative sample drawn from two South African provinces. While we find that context matters, patriarchal values not only influence conclusory judgments in real-world disputes, but also influence how the “facts” in such disputes are understood and evaluated. As motivated reasoning theory has taught, people are motivated to see the world in a confirmatory way. While few people openly claim to be supporters of violence against women, many more interpret contextual factors in such a way as to create exceptions to those general values.