“Love Hurts, Love Scars, Love Wounds” Narratives That Normalize and Legitimize Intimate Partner Violence Through Moral Disengagement Mechanisms

This article undertakes a focused, thematic synthesis of interdisciplinary scientific literature to synthesize existing knowledge on how Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is legitimized and normalized across diverse sociocultural contexts. Our analysis comprehensively covers physical, psychological, sexual, and controlling behaviours. The effect of this review is a novel hierarchical typology of narratives that frame and justify abuse, which are then analysed through the lens of Bandura’s eight mechanisms of moral disengagement (MD). The core argument proposes that the widespread persistence of IPV is sustained by a system of social coherence, not solely individual pathology. Legitimization operates hierarchically: fundamental societal ideologies provide the foundational Moral Justification, enabling the subsequent activation of individual MD strategies (specifically Dehumanization, Attribution of Blame, and Diffusion of Responsibility) by perpetrators. Crucially, the MD framework is extended to show that these narratives are also mobilized by external observers and social institutions to manage moral discomfort and maintain a predictable social order through defensive attribution and the Belief in a Just World. This model demonstrates that effective prevention must target the underlying cultural narratives and the hierarchical moral architecture that actively license these moral exemptions.