Decoding Deficits of Different Types of Batterers During Presentation of Facial Affect Slides

High testosterone levels and sensitivity to acute stress in perpetrators of domestic violence with low cognitive flexibility and impairments in their emotional decoding process: A preliminary study

“…Our results lead us to believe that the deficit could be in emotional stimuli decoding, especially in those stimuli with a neutral value. In this sense, a previous study suggested that a significant percentage of IPV perpetrators may have these deficits (Babcock et al, 2008). IPV perpetrators may misunderstand and attribute hostile connotations to neutral stimuli and this increases the likelihood of behaving aggressively (Holtzworth-Munroe & Smutzler, 1996) if they believe that their partners maligned or blamed them.…”

“…There may be some deficits whose interaction with hormonal parameters such as T may either facilitate or inhibit violent behavior. When comparing IPV perpetrators with nonviolent males, the IPV perpetrator group was more likely to misidentify signals given by their partners and react in a hostile and/or violent manner (Babcock, Green, & Webb, 2008). These detection errors were restricted to neutral and dislike facial expressions that were usually interpreted as hostile signals.…”

“…We hypothesized that IPV perpetrators would show higher basal T levels (Soler et al, 2000) and lower C levels (Moya-Albiol, 2010) than controls. IPV perpetrators would also present cognitive dysfunctions such as poor cognitive flexibility (Teichner et al, 2001) and poor recognition of emotions or thoughts (Holtzworth-Munroe & Smutzler, 1996), especially for neutral expressions (Babcock et al, 2008). Finally, we hypothesized that IPV perpetrators should report lower affective empathy (Covell et al, 2007) and a masculinized or smaller 2D:4D ratio (Bailey & Hurd, 2005).…”

“…Errors decoding facial expressions (which constitute an initial stage of social information processing) may produce deficits in the "theory of mind" (ToM). For this reason, hostile biases in the decoding process, especially in partners, may make it difficult to understand a partner's perspective or feelings (Babcock et al, 2008) and may lead to social inadequacy and even cause the adoption of inappropriate behavior that predisposes violent action (Tirapu-Ustárroz, Pérez-Sayes, Erekatxo-Bilbao, & Pelegrín-Valero, 2007). The ToM is similar to the concept of "cognitive empathy," although empathy is a multi-dimensional construct which also has an affective component that can be analyzed with two scales of the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI).…”

Testosterone and attention deficits as possible mechanisms underlying impaired emotion recognition in intimate partner violence perpetrators

“…In fact, one study reported that IPV perpetrators are less able to recognize standardized neutral and disgust facial expressions than non-violent men, although they did not differ in interpreting other facial expressions conveying, for example, sadness, anger, fear, happiness, and surprise (Babcock, Green, & Webb, 2008), suggesting that IPV perpetrators may present deficits in recognizing their wives' or partners' emotions, thus increasing the risk of violent reactions. In a similar line, another study demonstrated that IPV perpetrators with diminished sensitivity to their wives' or partners' expressions of fear presented a high risk of perpetrating IPV (Marshall & Holtzworth-Munroe, 2010).…”