Patterns of Psychological Aggression, Dominance, and Jealousy within Marriage

Abstract

Few empirical studies with representative samples have focused on the gendered aspect of psychological aggression and its sub-constructs of dominance and jealousy. Those that do report on gender differences, often fail to report on important dyadic factors such as whether the aggression is unilateral or bilateral in nature. Differences in psychological aggression, dominance, and jealousy constructs were assessed in a representative sample of 453 married parents. Overall, women had significantly higher dominance, jealousy, and psychological aggression scores. Both male and female respondents in relationships where there was bi-directional severe psychological aggression demonstrated higher mean levels of severe psychological aggression, dominance, and jealousy than did their counterparts who were unilaterally severely aggressive. This is the first study to demonstrate that bilateral psychological aggression is associated with higher mean levels of psychological aggression, dominance, and jealousy scores for both male and female partners than unilateral aggression. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no differential impact of severe psychological aggression by gender.