Citation

Hamby SL. Psychol. Violence 2011; 1(3): 163-165.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/a0024121

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Violence scholarship has focused primarily on accumulating new empirical findings. Theoretical advances, however, are also essential for synthesizing and organizing empirical knowledge in ways that can advance research, prevention, intervention and policy. The articles in this special issue of Psychology of Violence represent the beginnings of a second wave of violence scholarship. There have been many calls for multi-factorial approaches to understanding violence, but most of these are fairly general injunctions to include individual, family, and social factors, which seldom include specific analyses about how these factors intersect. In contrast, the articles included here present detailed, nuanced analyses of how specific mechanisms inter-relate with each other. These mechanisms include neurobiological processes such as arousal, social cognitive processes such as automatic cognitions, relational processes such as attachment, and macrosystem processes that affect entire communities and societies. These analyses have been applied to peer victimization, sexual victimization, criminal offending, intimate partner violence, suicide, global warming, and to the commonalities among all forms of interpersonal violence. One important outcome of these authors' work is new insights for actionable steps to improve prevention, intervention, and policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)