The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model in the Study of Aggression and Victimization within Couples: An Empirical Examination in 361 Dyads

Abstract

After more than four decades of study, now there is strong empirical evidence available to researchers on the main correlates of IPV against women. These correlates are in personal, family, community, and even socio-structural domains. The members of the couple may present individual characteristics that make them prone to the use of IPV (Capaldi & Kim, 2007; Cavanaugh & Gelles, 2005). Aspects such as their personality profile, with a special incidence of cluster-B personality profile, which includes narcissistic, antisocial, histrionic, and borderline personality, have been associated with IPV (

Relationships of Adolescent and Young Couples with Violent Behaviors: Conflict Resolution Strategies

“…The present study is a continuation of previous research i.e., [ 8 , 12 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], but includes two new variables: perception of the two members of the couple and used problem-solving strategies.…”

“…On this basis, women make more use of psychological violence, but when it is a case of more severe violence like physical violence, then it is the men who present the highest indices [ 25 , 26 ]. Furthermore, the findings of Herrero et al (2020) [ 8 ], the results of the analysis of both partners on mutual violence, also underline that psychological violence is the most common, and physical and sexual aggression show a lower prevalence. According to them, the couples are most aggressive when there is a dynamic of mutual violence in the relationship.…”

“…In fact, one of the clear conclusions that has been reached is that violence is a human and not just a gender phenomenon, as there are many ways of exerting it [ 6 , 7 ]. Currently, the research that studies interpersonal relationships of the younger couples describes scenarios that are different from those of a few years ago and from those of adult couples [ 8 , 9 ]. With regard to heterosexual couples, these are characterized by high indices of prevalence of violence both in men and women.…”

“…To date, one vision of violence has mainly been studied which has helped us to understand this problem, but which presents certain limitations, as there are others with different characteristics which are very frequent in dating relationships like for example, its two-way nature or mutual behaviors, in which both partners can acquire the two roles present in a relationship: both the man and the woman can be partner abusers and, consequently, the victim of abusive behavior in the same relationship and in the same scenario. Moreover, several authors have begun to focus on the study of the two members of the couple, analyzing the actor and the couple to thus discover the scope of their victimization and aggression [ 8 , 12 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. These studies have found low levels of agreement between the two members of the couple regarding their perceptions on occurrence and frequency of different types of violence.…”

“…On the other hand, the study of perceived partner violence has been traditionally carried out by taking into account only the perception of only one of the members of the couple with the consequent biases in the results obtained. Our study, however, includes the perception of both members of the couple (actor-partner) [ 8 , 31 ] in order to achieve a greater reliability in the data obtained regarding perceived prevalence of dating violence.…”