Citation

Schweinle W, Ickes W, Rollings K, Jacquot C. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 2010; 29(4): 399-424.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0261927X10377988

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This research explored the relationships between the language that 86 married men used to describe their marriages, other personal characteristics of the men, and the men’s wife-directed aggression. Methods included linguistic inquiry word count analysis, temperament measures, an empathic accuracy-type paradigm, and signal detection analysis. Husbands’ use of anger words and egocentric words in describing their marriages, along with husbands’ impulsivity, critical/rejecting overattribution bias, and attentional disorder/ impairment predicted the men’s wife-directed aggression. Multiple regression and moderation analyses revealed that men’s use of anger words and first-person pronouns in describing their own marriages were unique predictors of their wife-directed aggression. Also, men’s critical/rejecting overattribution bias and impulsivity interacted to predict the men’s wife-directed aggression. Results are discussed in terms different wife-abuser subtypes and their implications for the treatment of aggressive husbands.