Men's Attitudes Condoning Marital Aggression: A Moderator between Family of Origin Abuse and Aggression against Female Partners

Abstract

This study examines whether the often-cited association between experiencing physical abuse in one's family of origin and behaving aggressively toward one's intimate female partner is moderated by attitudes condoning husband to wife aggression. Forty-seven men rated the justifiability of male-to-female aggression for 25 specific conditions. Attitudes condoning aggression were not correlated with either history of abuse or current abuse but the interaction between attitudes and history of exposure accounted for significant variance in physical and emotional aggression inflicted on adult female partners. For men who condone physical aggression, there was a strong correlation between abuse in the family of origin and actual physical and emotional aggression toward female partners, whereas for men who do not condone aggression, there were no significant correlations. These data illustrate how the significance of one risk factor, such as history of abuse, changes as a function of another variable—namely, attitudes condoning male-to-female aggression.