Removing Communication Biases in Interpersonal Violence with Instructions (Preprint)

Abstract

Intimate partner violence is a serious public health concern worldwide. According to WHO (2012), behavior in intimate relationships that causes psychological, physical, or sexual harm to the participant is defined as ‘intimate partner violence’ (IPV)

To interpret and evaluate the narratives of victims of violence in intimate relationships is essential to maintain a high level of legal certainty. The present study investigates to what extent it is possible to mitigate the biases found when communicating the severity of violence experienced in a relationship with another person. Three types of communication biases (perceptual differences) were hypothesised (calibration, accuracy, gender), and the purpose was to remove, or mitigate, these biases with ‘debiasing’ information.

A narrative describing physical and psychological intimate partner violence (IPV) collected in Sikström et al. 2023 was used. Narratives were paired with a sentence stating the extent of the biases found in earlier studies under five conditions: control condition (no debiasing information); three conditions with debiasing information related to the calibration, accuracy, and gender biases separately; and a fifth condition combining the information from the three aforementioned conditions.

The results showed that debiased information did not mitigate biases. The results partly replicated earlier findings of calibration bias for physical—but not for psychological—narratives. An accuracy bias was also found, but no gender bias was identified.

The results indicate that biases are robust when confronted with information aimed at removing said biases.