The relationships among, and predictors of, men’s sexual, physical, and emotional abusiveness toward romantic partners and others

Abstract

In recent years there has been growing interest in men's sexual, physical, and emotional abusiveness, particularly toward their girlfriends and wives. However, research on one form of abusiveness has typically been conducted in isolation from research on other forms of abusiveness. This fragmentation has resulted in unclean "non-abusive" comparison groups that may have included men who were abusive in ways not measured. One goal of the present study was, thus, to compare highly sexually abusive men with men who were sexually nonabusive and also virtually non-abusive physically and emotionally toward everyone -- romantic partners and others. When the clean comparison group was used, greater mean differences were found between the groups on all riskfactors than when the traditional comparison group (only sexually nonabusive) was used. However, thirteen risk-factors significantly differentiated the highly sexually abusive group from the comparison group regardless of which comparison group was used. One risk-factor differentiated the highly sexually .abusive group from the comparison group only when the clean comparison group was used. This risk-factor was having (as a child) witnessed physical violence between one's parents.

A further goal of this study was to explore the prevalence, frequencies, and relations among the different forms of abusiveness and their correlates. Some degree of sexually abusive behavior was reported by 48.8% of the men in this study, some degree of emotionally abusive behavior toward a romantic partner was reported by 98.9%, and some degree of physically abusive behavior toward a romantic partner was reported by 87.3% (at least one actual physical attack on a romantic partner was reported by 41.3% of this sample). Physical and emotional abusiveness were more related to each other than they were to sexual abusiveness, and whereas the target of sexual abusiveness was more often a romantic partner, the target of physical and emotional abusiveness was more often someone other than a romantic partner. After attitudes and habits were considered, childhood risk factors contributed significant additional prediction to physical and emotional abusiveness but not to sexual abusiveness. After childhood risk factors were considered, current attitudes and habits contributed less additional prediction to physical and emotional abusiveness toward others than to sexual abusiveness or than to physical and emotional abusiveness toward romantic partners. Alcohol by attitude interactions explained significant additional variance only for sexual abusiveness.

A final goal of this study was to identify "anti-risk factors" that might make some men less abusive than others even if they had childhood experiences that would typically lead to abusiveness as an adult. The ability to derive a great deal of satisfaction from earning someone's trust was identified as an anti-risk factor.

Theoretical implications are discussed within the context of the social learning/cognitive behavioral perspective and the social control/social conflict perspective. Implications for prevention and intervention efforts are also discussed.