The Perceived Likelihood of Spousal Violence: A Mind Genomics Exploration

We present a new way to understand how people perceive situations involving other people, situations that could be considered part of the everyday. The approach is Mind Genomics, which assesses the response of people to short, systematically varied vignettes about situations and other people. The responses to these vignettes are deconstructed into the part-worth contribution of the component elements that the vignette comprises, showing the ‘algebra of the mind.’ The deconstruction also is done on response time to the vignettes, showing the ability of the elements to engage attention when the respondent makes a judgment. When Mind Genomics is applied to descriptions of family life under stress, the data suggest that some elements are linked to predicted violence, others are not. Women appear to be more sensitive than men to the individual elements. Three different mind-sets emerged with different perceived ‘triggers’ to predicted family violence, with each mind-set encompassing both men and women: Mind-Set 1 - no specific warning; Mind-Set 2 - Sensitive to the economy; Mind-Set 3 - Family has problems. We present the PVI (personal viewpoint identifier) as a technique to assign new people to these mind-sets.