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Why do people conform in groups? Why do we obey authority figures? How does your role in society affect your behavior? And how can the pressure to conform sometimes lead people to commit atrocities in the name of 'obeying orders'?

Psychologists have spent decades studying the power of social influence, and the way in which it manipulates people's opinions and behavior. Specifically, social influence refers to the way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to meet the demands of a social group, perceived authority, social role or a minority within a group wielding influence over the majority.

Most of us encounter social influence in its many forms on a regular basis. For example, a student may alter his or her behavior to match that of other students in a class. The majority-held opinions of a group of friends are likely to inform the views of new members to that social group. Furthermore, we are influenced by the requests of people who are seen as holding positions of authority. For instance, an employee will follow the orders of his supervisors in order to please them.

Why people accept social influence

There are a number of reasons why people allow social influences to affect their thoughts and behavior.

One reason is that we often conform to the norms of a group to gain acceptance of its members. Supporters of a football team voluntarily wear shirts of their teams to feel a part of the group. Friends may also wear similar clothing to their peers to experience a sense of belonging and to emphasise their shared ideas.

Group conformity can also encourage cooperation when attempting to achieve a shared goal. When an individual is able to exhibit a minority influence over a wider group, he or she can persuade that group to work collectively. For example, charity organizers recruiting new volunteers advocate improving their community (e.g. litter picking) in a way that cannot be achieved as easily by just one person acting alone.

However, cooperation can lead to a conformity of views, resulting in a phenomenon known as groupthink. When this occurs, team members adopt agreed views and actions in the pursuit of a given goal, but reject criticism from individuals who oppose or question the group's behavior. This lack of critical thinking can have a negative impact on a group's performance as its ability to evaluate its own behavior and adapt to changing conditions is impeded.

Additionally, group conformity enables a sense of cohesion within a society. Laws prohibiting violence and theft help to protect every individual within a community. However, such laws depend on people conforming to the norms of the wider group by acting as law-abiding citizens.

Whilst social influence can have a positive effect on behavior, its disadvantages have been a motivating factor behind research into conformity by psychologists such as Stanley Milgram.

Conformity to a narrow set of behaviors and views can discourage the nurturing of new ideas which could improve the lives of a group. It can discourage its members from questioning and debating the beliefs and held by the majority of a group and its practises. This behavior has been observed in cults, where members are often reluctant to doubt the group's authority publically for fear of being rejected by their peers.

Another form of social influence - minority influence - has also been used historically for malign purposes. The followers of leaders such as Adolf Hitler accepted and often internalized the Nazi leader's fascist views without question.

Following the Second World War, German officer Adolf Eichmann attempted to justify his participation in the Holocaust by claiming that he was merely 'following the orders' of perceived authority figures: in Eichmann's case, his commanders.

People tend to conform for one of two reasons: to act based on a more informed view ( informative social influence) or to match the views and behavior of a social group ( normative social influence):

Informative social influence (or social proof)

People feel the need to be informed by accurate information, and when they lack confidence in their own knowledge, they turn to others in the hope that they will provide them with the correct information. By accepting this information, regardless of whether it is accurate, the person is subjected to social influence.

Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated informative social influence in an experiment using the autokinetic effect.

Sherif (1935) placed participants in a darkened room, then projected a single, stationary light onto the wall facing them. In accordance with the autokinetic effect, when a person is unable to see another object to judge the light's relative position, the light appears to move.

One group of participants was then asked individually how far the light had moved. Based on their own perception alone, they reported that the light had shifted widely varying distances.

A second group was also asked how far the light had moved, but gave their answers in front of other members of the group.

Sherif found that participants who gave their answers in a group provided varying distances, but that the reported movement eventually fell into an ever-smaller range. In other words, when participants were unsure of the light's movement and information was available from other members of the group, they used their answers to inform their own opinions, leading to conformity amongst participants.

Normative social influence

A second type of conformity is normative social influence. People want to 'fit in' amongst friends and colleagues, and to be liked and respected by other members of their social group. They value the opinions of other members, and seek to maintain their standing within the group. Therefore, individuals will adjust their own attitudes and behavior to match the accepted norms of the group.

This conformity with the majority may involve following the fashion trends that are popular amongst a group of friends, adopting the rituals of a religious group or watching a particular TV show because classmates at college talk about it.

Social influence and conformity

Social influence takes a number of forms. One type of such influence is conformity, when a person adopts the opinions or behaviors of others. This often occurs in groups, when an individual conforms to the social norms respected by a majority of the group's members.

An individual may conform to the opinions and values of a group. They express support for views accepted by the group and will withhold criticism of group norms. Behavioral conformity can also influence a group member's actions: a person will behave in a way that is similar to others in the group.

Public-versus-private conformity

When conforming to the social norms of a group, a person may disagree with the opinions that they express or the actions that they take, but nonetheless, they adopt the behavior that is expected of them.

Public conformity involves matching one's behavior meet the expectations of others, whilst privately holding a different view. For example, a student may express a liking for a rock band because all of his friends listen to it. Privately, however, he may dislike their music, but conforms in front of his friends to gain their acceptance.

Private conformity occurs when a person internalizes the views of a group, and adopts a majority opinion as his or her own. For instance, the student listens to the music of a rock band that his friends like. Over time, he realises that he too enjoys this type of music. As his private opinion has changed, private conformity has occurred.

Asch's conformity experiments

One of the most-cited researchers into conformity was the Polish psychologist Solomon Asch (1907-1996). In the 1950s, he carried out a series of experiments known as the Asch Paradigms to understand the circumstances which led to people conforming to a majority influence.

In an experiment at Swarthmore College, Asch ( Asch and Guetzkow, 1951) presented participants with a printed line of a given length, and a series of additional lines of varying lengths. One of the lines was the same length as in the initial image, whilst the other two were significantly different.

In a group setting, participants were then asked to individually report which of the lines was the same length as the first. They were unaware that other members of the group were confederates who, in some of the trials, had been instructed to answer that a line which was clearly of a different length matched that of the original line.

Participants were torn between two options: did they report the answer which they had observed to be obviously correct but contradict other members of the group? Or, should they disregard their private opinion and report the answer that other group members were reporting?

Using this experimental design, Asch discounted the potential for informative influence to affect participants' answers. As the matching line length was obvious, they had no need to refer to other group members' opinions.

Even when the correct answer was obvious, Asch found that participants would conform to the group norm and report obviously inaccurate answers.

Asch's studies showed that social influence can lead subjects to doubt their own knowledge when it is contradicted by the majority of their group's members, or to exhibit public conformity and avoid questioning group norms.

Identification

Kelman (1958) distinguished between 3 types of conformity, including identification.

This occurs when an individual identifies with other members of a group and conforms to its opinions and behaviors. In doing so, they may seek to gain the favor of other members and to be accepted into the group.

When identifying with a group, a person does not internalise its norms. When they leave the group, they may assume their own beliefs and behaviors.

For example, an employee joining an office may go bowling as colleagues on her team like to visit the bowling alley once a week. Privately, however, she may dislike the pastime and prefer to spend it reading at home.

Internalization

Internalization is a form of opinion conformity, whereby the opinions of a group, or minority within that group influence an individual's own opinions. The person may not only express the views of the group publically, but also adopts these new views and regards them as being his or her own - a form of private conformity.

The internalization of new beliefs frequently occurs in religious groups, when members privately adopt the spiritual ideas expressed by the authority figures (e.g. a priest or other spiritual leader) as their own personal beliefs.

Compliance

Another form of conformity is achieved through compliance. This involves a request that an individual or group complies with the instructions of another. Unlike internalization, compliance does not require private conformity, as a person may reluctantly comply with a request whilst privately doubting it.

Compliance frequently occurs when a person is asked by an authority figure to meet a particular set of demands. For example, drivers comply with the directions given by traffic wardens, and students comply with the requests of their teacher, who they view as holding a position of authority.

Compliance may be achieved using a number of techniques known as compliance strategies. These are often used by salespeople to persuade potential customers to fulfill their request to place orders.

Compliance strategies include the foot-in-the-door technique, which involves a person making a small initial request in order to gain compliance with another question. Once a person has complied with a request, they are more likely to agree to a later, more significant, request. For example, a car sales representative may ask a prospective customer to agree to test-drive a new car. If the person agrees, they may be able to persuade them to extend their compliance by accepting a later request to buy the car.

The door-in-the-face technique is another compliance strategy which takes an opposite approach. An unreasonably large request is made initially, followed by the request that the subject is expected to comply with. A person will almost certainly reject the first request, but the second appears more reasonable when compared to it, and so they may be more inclined to comply with the second proposition.
Read more about compliance strategies here
Obedience

Obedience is a form of public conformity which occurs when a person modifies their behavior to obey the directions of another, often in a position of authority. It does not require a subject to alter his or her private opinion.

Hierarchical relationships often involve one party obeying the orders of another. For instance, a son is expected to obey his parents, a teacher directs students to behave in class and a soldier takes orders from a superior officer. In each instance, the person in a subordinate position obeys the other, often for fear of the consequences of disobeying them.

In 1961, as the Nuremberg trials were taking place in Israel, the Nazi Adolf Eichmann gave testimony in his defense that he was merely following the orders of higher-ranking officials when he carried out war crimes leading to the Holocaust. American psychologist Stanley Milgram questioned how such people could obey the directions of others when such actions would lead to such atrocities. Milgram (1963) conducted an experiment in which participants played the role of 'teacher'.

One participant, a confederate, was asked to learn a set of word pairs and the teacher would test his knowledge of these pairs. They were placed in adjacent rooms and the teacher was positioned in front of a set of controls to administer electric shocks to the learner. The teacher was instructed to punish the learner with a shock after each incorrect he gave (they were unaware that their compliance would not result in an actual shock to the confederate, who enacted responses to the punishments).

Milgram tested participants' willingness to obey by instructing the experimenters to administer higher shocks. When they displayed a reluctance to injure the learner, further encouragement to continue the procedure were given.

The study found that all of the participants obeyed the order to shock the learner, but to varying degrees. His findings suggest that obedience to perceived authority figures can take precedence over one's own morals, and that situational factors, such as the setting participants found themselves in, can influence behavior even when personality factors (e.g. moral objections) oppose it.

Milgram (1974) proposed agency theory to explain the tendency to obey authority. He suggested that an individual may be in one of two states at any one time:

1. Autonomous state - when an individual's behavior is determined by his or her own independent beliefs and responsibility is taken for such actions. When a person regrets their actions, they experience feelings of guilt.

2. Agentic state - a person perceives another as being in a position of authority. They obey orders issued by the authority figure, acting as an 'agent' on their behalf. When this behavior is perceived to be a mistake, the person attributes responsibility to the authority that ordered it, rather than feeling guilt for their role in it.

When a person feels that an authority will take responsibility for the actions that they ask them to carry out, Milgram believed that an agentic shift can occur from an autonomous to an agentic state.

Factors affecting conformity

Conformity rates within a group vary depending upon a number of factors.

The size of a majority can affect conformity rates within a group. Asch (1956) tested conformity rates whilst varying the number of confederates taking a common position. He found that conformity increased in line with the size of the majority, but that the most substantial increases occurred as the majority increased from 1 to 3.

Additionally, Asch found that group consensus and objecting members can affect conformity. Unanimity of opinion amongst members increased conformity, whilst dissenting voices encouraged other members to behave independently.

Cultural differences can also influence conformity. Bond and Smith (1996) found a correlation between conformity levels and societal attitudes in terms of individualism-collectivism. Conformity levels have been found to be lower in cultures where individualism is valued (particularly in Western countries such as the UK and US). In collectivist cultures, where individuals are expected to behave and work in a way that benefits society as a whole, conformity is often higher.

Furthermore, task difficulty can affect the extent to which an individual will consult the majority-held opinion when completing an activity. Lucas et al (2006) found that individuals' reduced confidence in one's own abilities to succeed at a task, or low self-efficacy, can increase his or her conformity.

Social roles

A further form of social influence is the roles in which people find themselves. Each role is associated with a set of attitudes and forms of behavior, and the role that a person is assigned can influence their actions and opinions.

Most of us are influenced by a number of roles at any one time. You may play a professional role - from doctor to wait-staff, naval officer to writer. Each profession is associated with different types of behavior. For example, people expect a doctor or naval office to be more serious than a circus entertainer, and may try fulfill this assumption when given a particular professional role. Other types of role, such as gender, family and societal roles, can also influence behavior.

Zimbardo et al (1973) conducted a well-known study to examine how social roles influence behavior. In the Stanford prison experiment, participants were assigned the role of either prisoner of prison officer, and were asked to play out their roles in a mock prison which Zimbardo had built in the basement of Stanford University, complete with cells for subjects.

During the study, Zimbardo himself assumed the role of prison officer in order to observe the behavior of participants.

He found that the behavior of those assigned to act as prison officers rapidly changed to meet their perceptions of the role. They would punish prisoners by asking them to perform push-ups and in one incident, sprayed a fire extinguisher in an attempt to quell a rebellion.

Similarly, prisoners themselves adopted a subservient role to the officers, treating them as authority figures and reporting on the 'misbehavior' of fellow prisoners.

Zimbardo found that assigned social roles led participants to behave in a way that they would not normally. Having eliminated participants from the experiment who were likely to behave in an offensive manner, he concluded that it was people's preconceptions of their assigned roles and the experimental situation in which they found themselves that influenced their actions.

Minority Influence

Whilst conformity usually occurs in response to the norms of a majority - other members in a social group - individuals or minorities of a group can also exhibit social influence. This is known as minority influence.

Minority influence occurs when an individual presents an opinion that is different to that held by the majority. As this opinion is novel and contrary to group norms, the attention of other members' is drawn to it, and they are led to consider the merits of the minority opinion.

As minority influence runs against the accepted beliefs of a group, it cannot rely upon normative influence to lead other members to comply: individually tend towards a majority-held view to feel as though they are part of a group. Instead, a minority view usually needs to exert informative influence. By presenting new information (e.g. a key fact) as having been overlooked by the majority, a minority can persuade other members to reconsider their opinion. This process is known as conversion. If a minority influence is able to convert a sufficient number of members, the view will eventually become the opinion held by a majority of individuals within the group.

Many social and political movements, such as the civil rights movement in the United States, use minority influence to change the views of the wider population.

Minority influence is more effective when the person expressing the view displays consistency: Moscovici et al (1969) conducted an experiment in which a group was asked to identify the color shown on a series of slides. When a minority of confederates within the group consistently answered that slides were 'green', other participants were more likely to be influenced when giving their own answers than when the confederates were inconsistent in their responses.

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Social Influence: Why We Conform In Groups

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Why do people to conform in groups? A look at how social influence affects opinions and behavior.

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For millions of Americans, issues of racial and ethnic identification are frequently complicated, a legacy of the country's endless waves of immigration as well as its long history of slavery and expansion into Native American lands across the continent.

"Passing" as white was not uncommon in the pre-Civil Rights era, when strict separation between African-Americans and whites was generally expected in many places. With the rise of "minority majority" America, questions of boundaries and overlapping identities continue to grow only more nuanced and complex. Of course, racial categories are social constructs; scholars note that even perceived "monolithic" identities such as African-American almost always, genetically speaking, encompass mixed races.

A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that an estimated 6.9% of Americans identify as multiracial, and a sizable percentage of these individuals report having changed the way they previously thought about their racial identity. By far the largest multiracial group is comprised of mixed Native American-Caucasian ancestry.

Beginning in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau began allowing for individuals to self-identify as more than one race on its survey forms. The 2010 Census recorded some 9 million people of mixed-race status (2.9% of the population overall), and more than 700,000 persons identified with three or four different races. (The more recent Pew survey, then, suggests that the Census numbers may reflect an under-count.)

The June 2015 controversy over the head of the Spokane Washington NAACP chapter, Rachel Dolezal, who resigned after her biological parents revealed in 2015 that her ancestry was predominantly white with some Native American ancestry, is just the latest chapter in a long, tangled history of racial identity in America - encompassing issues that go well beyond black and white. For example, research has found that after the 9/11 attacks there was a substantial decrease in the probability that Arab and Muslim Americans would self-identify as white. Even among sub-groups, such as Cuban-Americans, there are long-running, intra-community debates over ethnicity and race.

Social scientists continue to study the impact of racial issues across diverse areas, from the way economic scarcity can influence perceptions; to issues of law enforcement and criminal justice; to the way race can shape the mechanisms of policy and politics.

Below is a selection of research on race, ethnicity and identity in the United States.

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Abstract: "This mixed-methods study focused on adolescents who rejected conventional singular racial/ethnic categorization by selecting multiple race/ethnicities or writing descriptions of 'Other' racial/ethnic identities in response to a survey item asking them to identify their race/ethnicity. Written responses reflected eight distinct categories ranging from elaborative descriptions of conventional race categories to responses refusing the construct of race/ethnicity. Students' endorsement of multiple or 'Other' ethnicities, and the resultant categories, differed by gender, grade, school type, and school compositions. Findings support scholars' concern that common conceptualizations of race may not capture the complexity of self-identified racial categories among youth."

Abstract: "Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (white, black, Asian) and biracial (black/white, Asian/white) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (white, black and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (white, black and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based."

Abstract: "Over the past 500 years, North America has been the site of ongoing mixing of Native Americans, European settlers and Africans (brought largely by the trans-Atlantic slave trade), shaping the early history of what became the United States. We studied the genetic ancestry of 5,269 self-described African Americans, 8,663 Latinos, and 148,789 European Americans who are 23andMe customers and show that the legacy of these historical interactions is visible in the genetic ancestry of present-day Americans. We document pervasive mixed ancestry and asymmetrical male and female ancestry contributions in all groups studied. We show that regional ancestry differences reflect historical events, such as early Spanish colonization, waves of immigration from many regions of Europe, and forced relocation of Native Americans within the U.S. This study sheds light on the fine-scale differences in ancestry within and across the United States and informs our understanding of the relationship between racial and ethnic identities and genetic ancestry."

Abstract: "The socioeconomic and cultural changes that result from an increasingly interconnected world have been speculated to have important implications for the nature of adolescent development. Unfortunately, the historical time necessary for these changes to take place means that definitive research on the impact of globalization necessarily will be slow in forthcoming. Adolescents from immigrant families, however, already experience the social and cultural shifts thought to typify globalization, and an analysis of their experiences could shed light on what to expect as existing national barriers become more permeable. The value of flexibility in the face of great social and cultural change appears to be the dominant theme from research on immigrant youth, although that flexibility can be constrained by socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial stratification systems in host societies. This review highlights the implications of these findings for what may lie ahead for teenagers as globalization continues to expand."

Abstract: "During the 2000s, Arab and Islamic American racial identity selection was subjected to an exogenous racializing event, viz., public and private reaction to the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. The Al Qaeda attacks clearly demarcate a period in which there was a structural increase in the intensity of U.S. stigmatization of persons with Islamic religious affiliation and Arab ethnicity. This stigmatization created an exogenous reduction in the expected payoff to acculturation relative to non-acculturation. This paper uses self-identification as white as its measure of acculturation and the fraction of all hate crimes directed at Muslims as its measure of stigmatization after 9/11. Comparing 2002-2012 to 1996-2001, there is a statistically significant and substantively large decrease in the unconditional and conditional probabilities that Arab and Islamic Americans will self-identify as white."

Abstract: "How racial identity influences self-esteem and psychological well-being among African Americans remains unresolved due to unexplained inconsistencies in theoretical predictions and empirical findings. Using data from the National Survey of American Life (N = 3,570), we tested hypotheses derived from social identity theory and the internalized racism perspective. Findings support social identity theory in showing that African Americans strongly identify with their group and view it very positively. In addition, those who identify more with their group and evaluate it more positively have greater self-esteem, greater mastery, and fewer depressive symptoms. However, findings also support the internalized racism perspective by showing that when group evaluation is relatively negative, racial identification is related to lower mastery and higher depressive symptoms."

Abstract: " Having a connection to one's ethnic heritage is considered a protective factor in the face of discrimination; however, it is unclear whether the protective effects are persistent across multiple stressors. Furthermore, the dimensions of ethnic identity that reflect group pride/connection (affirmation) and exploration of the meaning of group membership (achievement) may operate differently in the face of stress. The present study examined the moderating role of ethnic identity affirmation and achievement on concurrent and longitudinal relationships between exposure to stress (discrimination, family hardship, exposure to violence) and antisocial behavior in a sample of 256 Black and Latino male youth (70% Black) living in low-income urban neighborhoods. Using regression analysis, concurrent associations were examined at age 18, and longitudinal associations were tested 18 months later. We found that, among youth experiencing discrimination, high levels of achievement and low levels of affirmation predicted greater aggressive behavior and delinquency. Low affirmation also predicted more criminal offending in the face of discrimination. The two dimensions operated similarly in the context of family stress, in which case high levels of affirmation and achievement predicted lower levels of antisocial behavior."

"Redefining Racial Categories: The Dynamics of Identity Among Brazilian-Americans"
Fritz, Catarina. Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora, June 2014, Vol. 3, Issue 1. doi: 10.1080/02619288.2014.909732.

Abstract: "Research based on a sample of Brazilian youth living in Massachusetts reveals a variety of responses to racialisation of their phenotypes. Caught between the fluid patterns of colour categories found in Brazilian society and the more rigid racial stratification that characterises the USA, Brazilian-Americans have followed a variety of strategies to adapt to this situation. By exploring the reactions of these young adults of different appearance along the colour continuum to the constraints of the dominant society, questions concerning the future dynamics of race relations in the USA are raised against a background of the continuing post-racialism debate."
Keywords: race, ethnicity, self-identity, African-American, Latino, Hispanic, Native American, Indian, Asian, research roundup

Last updated: June 16, 2015

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Race, ethnicity and identity in America: Research roundup - Journalist's Resource

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For millions of Americans, issues of racial and ethnic identification are frequently complicated, a legacy of the country's endless waves of immigration as well as its long history of slavery and expansion into Native American lands across the continent.

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Printable PDF
Despite the fact that advocacy groups like NOW have worked for over three decades to halt the epidemic of gender-based violence and sexual assault, the numbers are still shocking. It is time to renew our national pledge, from the President and Congress on down to City Councils all across the nation to END violence against women and men, girls and boys. This effort must also be carried on in workplaces, schools, churches, locker rooms, the military, and in courtrooms, law enforcement, entertainment and the media. NOW pledges to continue our work to end this violence and we hope you will join us in our work.

MURDER

In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner. That's an average of three women every day. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (Intimate Partner Violence or Battering)

Domestic violence can be defined as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year. Less than 20 percent of battered women sought medical treatment following an injury.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That's more than 600 women every day. Other estimates, such as those generated by the FBI, are much lower because they rely on data from law enforcement agencies. A significant number of crimes are never even reported for reasons that include the victim's feeling that nothing can/will be done and the personal nature of the incident.

THE TARGETS

Young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape. Women ages 20-24 are at greatest risk of nonfatal domestic violence, and women age 24 and under suffer from the highest rates of rape. The Justice Department estimates that one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape during their college years, and that less than five percent of these rapes will be reported. Income is also a factor: the poorer the household, the higher the rate of domestic violence - with women in the lowest income category experiencing more than six times the rate of nonfatal intimate partner violence as compared to women in the highest income category. When we consider race, we see that African-American women face higher rates of domestic violence than white women, and American-Indian women are victimized at a rate more than double that of women of other races.

IMPACT ON CHILDREN

According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, "growing up in a violent home may be a terrifying and traumatic experience that can affect every aspect of a child's life, growth and development. . . . children who have been exposed to family violence suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as bed-wetting or nightmares, and were at greater risk than their peers of having allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and flu." In addition, women who experience physcial abuse as children are at a greater risk of victimization as adults, and men have a far greater (more than double) likelihood of perpetrating abuse.

IMPACT ON HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that the cost of domestic violence in 2003 was more than over $8.3 billion. This cost includes medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity.

LEGISLATION

In 1994, the National Organization for Women, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now called Legal Momentum), the Feminist Majority and other organizations finally secured passage of the Violence Against Women Act, which provided a record-breaking $1.6 billion to address issues of violence against women. However it took nearly an additional year to force the Newt Gingrich-led Congress to release the funding. An analysis estimated that in the first six years after VAWA was passed, nearly $14.8 billion was saved in net averted social costs. VAWA was reauthorized in 2005, with nearly $4 billion in funding over five years.

VIOLENCE BETWEEN SAME-SEX COUPLES

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, "domestic violence affecting LGBT individuals continues to be grossly underreported . . . there is a lack of awareness and denial about the existence of this type of violence and its impact, both by LGBT people and non-LGBT people alike."

Myths regarding gender roles perpetuate the silence surrounding these abusive relationships; for example, the belief that there aren't abusive lesbian relationships because women don't abuse each other. Shelters are often unequipped to handle the needs of lesbians (as a women-only shelter isn't much defense against a female abuser), and transgender individuals. Statistics regarding domestic violence against LGBT people are unavailable at the national level, but as regional studies demonstrate, domestic violence is as much as a problem within LGBT communities as it is among heterosexual ones.

RESOURCES

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Violence Against Women in the United States: Statistics

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Printable PDF Despite the fact that advocacy groups like NOW have worked for over three decades to halt the epidemic of gender-based violence and sexual assault, the numbers are still shocking. It is time to renew our national pledge, from the President and Congress on down to City Councils all across the nation to END violence against women and men, girls and boys.

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What the Data Say About Race, Ethnicity and American Youth - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

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What we know about the race and ethnicity of American kids today.

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Abortion in the U.S.

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Abortions in the United States are happening earlier in pregnancy than they used to: More than six in 10 occur within the first eight weeks of pregnancy, and more than three in 10 take place at six weeks or earlier. Medication abortion helps make this possible

Principal Research Scientist

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The Guttmacher Institute is a primary source for research and policy analysis on abortion in the United States. In many cases, Guttmacher's data are more comprehensive than state and federal government sources.

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Here's a link to an article about race

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Abusive relationships

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Here's a link to an article of abortion rates in the U.S.

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Secure login to Goleman Library Subscription Databases

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Secure login for Goleman Library subscription databases.