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Anger, Control, and Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adulthood

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Abstract

A common theme is that intimate partner violence (IPV) is not about anger, but about power and control. While prior research has focused either on respondents’ or partners’ controlling behaviors, an interactionist perspective provides the basis for hypothesizing that both respondent and partner control will be associated with increased odds of reporting perpetration, and that emotional processes are a component of IPV experiences. Analyses rely on interview data collected at waves 1 and 5 of a longitudinal study (Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study; n = 928) of adolescent and young adult relationships. Results indicate that after controlling for traditional predictors, both respondent and partner control attempts and measures of anger (including a measure of relationship-based anger) contributed significantly to the odds of reporting perpetration. Further, these patterns did not differ by gender, indicating areas of similarity in the relationship and emotional processes associated with variations in men and women’s IPV reports.

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Notes

  1. For more information about the study and procedures for accessing public use files see http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/series/00252.

  2. Attrition analyses indicate that subjects retained did not differ significantly on most dimensions (e.g., wave 1 IPV report, parental coercion, and delinquency), but were somewhat more likely to be female, and to report a non-traditional (step-parent, single-parent, and ‘other’) family structure. Additionally, Black respondents and those reporting low levels of parental education (less than high school) were less likely to be retained.

  3. Supplemental multivariate models were tested that specify gender (i.e., combining female reports about their own control attempts and male respondents’ reports about their female partners to create an index of ‘female control’; using a similar strategy to create an index of male control), and we observed similar findings. In these models, both male and female control attempts were related to higher odds of IPV perpetration (results not shown).

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD036223) to Peggy C. Giordano, Principal Investigator, the Department of Health and Human Services (5APRPA006009) to Monica A. Longmore, Principal Investigator, the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U. S. Department of Justice (Awards 2009-IJ-CX-0503 and 2010-MU-MU-0031) to Peggy C. Giordano, Principal Investigator, and in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding supported by a grant from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24HD050959) to Wendy D. Manning, Principal Investigator. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice or the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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  1. Jennifer E. Copp

    Present address: College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

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  1. Department of Sociology and Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA

    Peggy C. Giordano, Jennifer E. Copp, Monica A. Longmore & Wendy D. Manning

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  1. Peggy C. Giordano
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Correspondence to Peggy C. Giordano.

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Giordano, P.C., Copp, J.E., Longmore, M.A. et al. Anger, Control, and Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adulthood. J Fam Viol 31, 1–13 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9753-3

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