Violent

Communal

Community risk factors include poverty, low community participation, and diminished economic opportunities. Since violence is a matter of perception as well as a measurable phenomenon, psychologists have found variability in whether people perceive certain physical acts as "violent". For example, in a state where execution is a legalized punishment we do not typically perceive the executioner as "violent", though we may talk, in a more metaphorical way, of the state acting violently. Likewise, understandings of violence are linked to a perceived aggressor-victim relationship: hence psychologists have shown that people may not recognise defensive use of force as violent, even in cases where the amount of force used is significantly greater than in the original aggression. The concept of violence normalization is known as socially sanctioned, or structural violence and is a topic of increasing interest to researchers trying to understand violent behavior, medical anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, and bioarchaeology. An environment of great inequalities between people may cause those at the bottom to use more violence in attempts to gain status.