Examining the Interpersonal Context of Intimate Partner Violence: The Role of Emotional Communication and Relationship Distress
In many community samples of couples, intimate partner violence (IPV) can be defined as a dyadic phenomenon that occurs during conflict escalation. Yet, among the risk factors associated with male-to-female (M-F) IPV (i.e., physical, psychological, and sexual violence), the interpersonal context is one of the least understood. Thus, identifying which aspects of communication are associated with IPV is critical to inform emerging models of relational violence.
Although heightened emotional arousal and poor emotion regulation are common experiences reported among individuals who engage in IPV, no investigation has explored patterns of emotional arousal during conversations involving couples with M-F IPV. Therefore, the current study is the first to examine patterns of vocally-encoded emotional arousal during couple conversations between husbands who previously engaged in IPV and their wives (N = 149). Couples were recruited using a 2x2 design that crossed relationship distress and mild physical IPV. Emotional arousal was measured continuously during two problem-solving conversations using vocal fundamental frequency. Three sets of analyses were used to explore different aspects of emotional communication. These included (a) growth curve models to examine overall trajectories of emotional arousal, (b) cross-lagged actor-partner interdependence models to assess emotional reactivity between partners, and (c) coupled-linear oscillator models to examine emotion co-regulation.
Results indicate that male partners in distressed/IPV relationships were responsive to their female partner’s arousal, took longer to return to their typical level of arousal when their partner became upset, and demonstrated continuous increases in arousal across the conversation. This differed from distressed/no IPV and non-distressed/IPV couples: While these partners were also reactive to each other’s arousal and slowed each other’s returns to baseline, both men and women demonstrated overall patterns of de-escalation by the end of the conversation. These findings suggest a particular gender orientation for the unique impact of relationship distress and IPV on emotional communication: Within such interpersonal contexts, men, relative to women, might have greater difficulty down-regulating their emotions—a process that has implications for risk of physical violence. Additionally, in line with the conference theme, these findings provide support for the use of novel methodologies to examine vulnerability factors among couples for whom other forms of violence are a problem (e.g., sexual coercion). Given that individuals who commit acts of sexual aggression also report difficulties in emotional expression and dampening of negative mood states, using tools such as vocal fundamental frequency might offer a window into interpersonal processes that are associated with sexual violence.
