Exploring the Reflection of Family Violence in Common Folk Tales of Bakhtiari Culture

Through symbolic modeling in tales, the specific attitudes to domestic or family violence are conveyed to the audience. By exploring them, we can thus attain different attitudes to violence. This research aims to explore family violence, its causes, and factors that control it in Bakhtiari folk tales based on the theories of social psychologists (with an emphasis on the theory of psychologists who believe in the social origin of aggression and social learning). This research was conducted using the documentary study method. The research population consisted of 139 written folk tales in Bakhtiari culture. After the violent scenes were extracted, they were classified in several general and main categories based on the theoretical framework and research objectives. We qualitatively analyzed the categories and sub-categories after counting them and taking percentages. The results of the study showed that verbal-mental violence has been more reflected in these tales and the family members have sought to cause psychological harm and endanger the other one's face. The wife/mother has been more the perpetrators of the family violence and the husband/father and daughter/sister have been more the victims of the violence. The socio-cultural (patriarchy, greed, deception, lie, and betrayal) and psychological factors (feeling of humiliation, failure and anger) have played the most role in causing family violence in these tales. There have been two types of negative and positive attitudes to family violence in these tales. In some tales, the wrongdoers have been punished by extremely aggressive behavior, and there has been a positive attitude to this violence. This caused the audience to come to the conclusion that they should do aggressive behaviors against other people's mistakes. Therefore, such an attitude can increase aggression.