Advancing Understanding About One Form of Interpersonal Violence

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal investigates Intimate partner violence (IPV) which refers to any behavior carried out with the primary intent to cause physical harm to a romantic partner who is motivated to avoid being harmed. This type of violence sometimes occurs when conflict situations get out of hand, and most who study this social problem agree that even ?normal? individuals (i.e., those who are neither dominance-oriented nor pathological) sometimes experience violent impulses during relationship conflict. How they refrain from acting upon such impulses is an important question that has not been widely studied. The research proposed here employs a multimethod approach, including self-report measures of actual IPV that has taken place in one's current romantic relationship and laboratory analog measures of IPV. To investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying IPV, the PI will employ experimental methods manipulating both self-control and level of provocation, couple interaction methods in which romantic partners engage in a videotaped conflict discussion together, reaction time methods to explore the implicit (automatic) cognitive processes individuals experience in the wake of provocation, and multiyear longitudinal methods to provide information about IPV trajectories over time. In an effort to capitalize upon insights from social psychological aggression research and to integrate them with the burgeoning IPV literature, the PI proposes a model identifying some of the central variables that could be used to predict when IPV is likely to transpire. Collectively, the proposed studies promise to provide a rich, textured understanding of the mechanisms underlying IPV, and findings from the proposed research could help to promote restraint-oriented interventions to decrease the prevalence and severity of IPV.