WORLD SCIENCE

"Long before it's in the papers"
August 03, 2010

Danger signs of relationship violence

Oct. 31, 2005
Courtesy Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
and World Science staff

Men act in certain ways to retain their partner and to continue their relationship with her. Sometime it’s sweet, like holding hands or giving flowers. Other times it’s a harbinger of danger. 

A study published in the latest issue of the research journal Personal Relationships identifies several specific acts and tactics that researchers say lead to the possibility of violence. 

Vigilance over a partner’s whereabouts was the highest-ranking tactic predicting violence across the researchers’ investigation, which included three studies in one.

Emotional manipulation, such as a man saying he would “die” if his partner ever left also was predictive of violence, the authors said.

Monopolization of time and the threat to punish for infidelity also were signals of violence. Showing love and care was among the tactics not associated with violence. 

Evolutionarily, “Mate retention behaviors are designed to solve several adaptive problems, such as deterring a partner’s infidelity and preventing defection from the mating relationship,” said Todd K. Shackelford, author of the study and a psychologist at Florida Atlantic University in Davie, Fla.

In the first two studies, the researchers asked independent samples of men and women to report on men’s retention behaviors and men’s violence against their partners. 

In the third study, they asked husbands and their wives to report on men’s retention behaviors and violence against wives. 

The highest-ranking correlations between single acts and violence were not consistent across the three studies. But acts such as “dropped by unexpectedly to see what my partner was doing” and “called to make sure my partner was where she said she would be” were the overall third and fifth highest predictors of violence, the researchers found.

These acts fall under the category of “vigilance,” which the couples reported as the highest–ranking tactic leading to violence and the only tactic across all three studies that uniquely predicts violence. 

“At a practical level, results of these studies can potentially be used to inform women and men, friends and relatives, of danger signs—the specific acts and tactics of mate retention that portend the possibility of future violence in relationships in order to prevent it,” the authors conclude.

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Front image courtesy U.S. Centers for Disease Control

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WORLD SCIENCE