Abstract
The present study examined the relationship between psychological and physical forms of intimate partner violence (IPV) across four waves of data during the developmental period of young adulthood. The links from early psychological aggression to later physical aggression and from early physical aggression to later psychological aggression across waves were tested while controlling for their cross-time stabilities and concurrent associations. IPV data were collected annually from 434 young adult respondents involved in a romantic relationship at least once during the respective years from the ages of 22–25. On average, participants provided IPV data for 3 out of the 4 years covered by the study (M= 2.82; standard deviation [SD] = 1.14). Results of a cross-lagged structural equation model (SEM) model indicated significant cross-time stabilities as well as significant, positive concurrent associations for both forms of aggression. Most important to this study were the findings that, controlling for these stabilities and concurrent associations, early psychological aggression was a consistent positive predictor of later physical aggression across waves whereas the opposite direction from early physical aggression to later psychological aggression was either non-significant or significant and negative.
Highlights
IntroductionAn underlying assumption addressing the emergence of aggression in relationships has proposed that less severe and more normative forms of aggression may escalate over time (i.e., psychological aggression may precede and escalate to physical aggression)
For nearly three decades, an underlying assumption addressing the emergence of aggression in relationships has proposed that less severe and more normative forms of aggression may escalate over time
Three out of the remaining four fit indices supported the interpretation that our structural model offered a good fit to the data (CFI = .92; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .08, 90% Confidence Interval (CI) = [0.06, 0.09]; SRMR = .09)
Summary
An underlying assumption addressing the emergence of aggression in relationships has proposed that less severe and more normative forms of aggression may escalate over time (i.e., psychological aggression may precede and escalate to physical aggression). The studies by O’Leary and colleagues (Murphy & O’Leary, 1989; O’Leary et al, 1994; O’Leary & Slep, 2003) clearly support a conceptual organization that places psychological aggression ahead of physical aggression in time, but there are at least two other possibilities One of these is that aggressiveness of both forms co-emerge. Fritz and O’Leary (2004) found a stable pattern of perpetrating psychological aggression among young adult women across a 10-year interval, and Fritz and Slep (2009) found it among a sample of male and female adolescents across a one-year interval Taken together, these two sets of findings suggest that both psychological and physical aggression tend to remain stable over time. We ensured that the longitudinal, cross-lag associations observed model the unique variance accounted for by earlier forms of each type of aggression in subsequent reports of the other and increase confidence in the temporal contributions of each type of aggression to the other over time
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