Abstract
The aim of this study was threefold: (1) to evaluate the factorial validity of the Psychological Aggression (PA) subscale of the Conflict Tactics Scales–Adult Recall version (CTS2-CA), (2) to investigate the prevalence of and gender differences in psychological dating aggression perpetration (PDAP; restrictive engulfment, denigration, hostile withdrawal, and dominance/intimidation), and (3) to explore a proposed path from witnessing interparental psychological aggression perpetration to PDAP via acceptance of psychological aggression as a mediator and gender as a moderator of the mediation. For the first purpose, college students (N = 275) completed father to mother and mother to father forms of the PA subscale of the CTS2-CA. Exploratory factor analyses yielded a single-factor solution for the father to mother (55.86% of the variance) and mother to father (49.12% of the variance) forms. For the second and third purposes, a separate sample of 1015 dating college students (69.6% women) completed the Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Abuse and Abuse subscale of the Intimate Partner Violence Attitude Scale-Revised, along with the PA subscale of the CTS2-CA. Gender differences emerged in the prevalence of restrictive engulfment (85.8% for women and 80.3% for men) and hostile withdrawal (96.3% for women and 91.1% for men). Moderated-mediation analyses revealed that women college students who witnessed more mother to father psychological aggression perpetration tended to hold more accepting attitudes towards psychological aggression and, in turn, perpetrated more psychological aggression against their partners. Common assumptions that boys are more likely to imitate fathers, whereas girls are more likely to imitate mothers and women [but not men] commit verbal aggression may together explain our findings from the perspective of the intergenerational transmission of violence hypothesis. For future research, we suggest investigating the proposed model with the experience of psychological aggression from the parents to the child, which may provide further insights.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This study is part of the first author’s Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Educational Sciences, Middle East Technical University, in 2015 under the supervision of the second author. The first author was financially supported by the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu, TÜBİTAK).
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The first author designed research in collaboration with the second author, collected the data, and performed the statistical analyses. The whole manuscript was written by the first author. She also prepared the manuscript according to the APA 7 and journal guidelines. The second author supervised the first author and did a critical reading with corrections and suggestions. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of Middle East Technical University [institutional research committee] and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual adult participants included in the study via the survey link. MetuSurvey link of the study was announced along with the following recruitment statement: “You are invited to participate in a research study which aims to investigate various determinants of psychological dating violence. You must be above 18 years old, an undergraduate/graduate student in Ankara universities, voluntary to participate in the research, and have a current dating relationship. The total time commitment for participation is almost 20 min. Your answers will only be used for the purpose of scientific research. You may stop or withdraw your participation at any time”. Additionally, participants were asked to declare that they are willing to participate in the study before moving on with the survey questions.
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Toplu-Demirtaş, E., Hatipoğlu-Sümer, Z. Aggression begets aggression: Psychological dating aggression perpetration in young adults from the perspective of intergenerational transmission of violence. Curr Psychol 42, 11539–11551 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02461-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02461-5