Contents
How are fights between partners related to blood sugar levels, voodoo dolls, and our tendency to measure everyone by ourselves? Five experiments that help to better understand the mechanisms of domestic violence.
If physical violence exists in society, it inevitably exists in the family. But its scale is difficult to assess: pokes and kicks are usually not publicized, and in the most egregious cases, where crime statistics could help, the numbers are unreliable.
Most often, society turns a blind eye to stories about domestic violence. Or even blames the victim… In many cases, the publicity of cases of physical violence against women causes bewilderment: why did you endure it, why didn’t you leave? Maybe it suited her, maybe they have such sexual games?
These two types of reaction – ignorance and bewilderment – indicate how little we know about the causes of domestic violence: where the aggressors come from and how they look for the victim, how the state and behavior of the victim changes after being in a situation of violence for a long time. We have selected five of the most characteristic studies that analyze the psychological mechanisms of spousal violence.
Jealousy is the main trigger of violence
A 2012 study by family professionals at Ohio State University included 17 men who had served time in Washington state prisons for acts of severe domestic violence that resulted in serious consequences and their partners (or ex-partners) who had been assaulted.1.
The material for the analysis were telephone conversations of these couples with a total duration of up to 4 hours each (all participants knew that conversations were being recorded for the purposes of the study). An analysis of the topics raised in the conversations made it possible to identify the main factors of violence in these families. Among them are the usual “suspects”: alcohol, drugs, the traditional distribution of roles in the family, often reinforced by religious beliefs.
But the most powerful trigger for acts of violence was jealousy, or rather, accusations of sexual infidelity, and no matter who suspected and accused whom, the result is the same: the woman was severely beaten and mutilated. So for helping professionals, and just for relatives and friends of a couple, sexual jealousy is a wake-up call that the threat of physical violence is quite real. Where it occurs, women are at risk.
Aggressive partners are sure: there are many like them
Washington State University researchers in 2010 worked with a group of 124 men who had previously committed acts of violence against their partners.2. They were asked how common they thought beatings were in the country. It turned out that those who like to dissolve their hands exaggerate the mass nature of such behavior, and at times. Members of this group believed that 27,6% of men had ever thrown various objects at a partner, while according to official data, only 11,9% of them had. The respondents also believe that 23,6% of men have ever forced their girlfriends to have sex, while in fact only 7,9% of men have committed “partner sexual violence”.
Where is the cause and where is the effect? Maybe these men took the liberty of raising their hand to their partners, because they thought that many people do this. Or it could be the other way around: first they resorted to violence, and then, for self-justification, they convinced themselves of the rampant prevalence of this phenomenon. However, as one of the authors of the study, social worker Denise Walker, noted, experience working with drinking students shows that if their inflated ideas about the extent of drinking are dispelled, they do begin to drink less.
It happens that defenders of wives who have experienced spousal abuse sometimes exaggerate the extent of this misfortune. They do it out of good intentions, trying to attract public attention and arouse sympathy for the victims of beatings. But, as this study shows, such tactics can lead to the exact opposite effect.
Breaking up with the aggressor is not enough to make you feel better.
In the same 2010, Ohio State University decided to find out how women feel (more precisely, women with children) who still managed to break up with a rapist.3. The material for the study was a previously compiled database that included 2400 low-income women who had recently given birth, mostly from ethnic minorities, and lived with their child’s father. Women were divided into three groups according to the type of relationship with this man: normal, that is, without violence, “controlling”, that is, those where the husband puts pressure on his wife psychologically, humiliates her and controls her life, and relationships in which there is physical violence in family. Two years later, all these women were contacted and found out how they were doing.
It turned out that the level of depression and anxiety increased in all participants, although to varying degrees, including those whose relationship with their husband is quite successful. The head of the study, psychologist Kate Adkins, explains this by the specifics of the sample and the initially difficult social situation of women who came to the attention of scientists. But here is an unexpected result: women who left their husband (“rapist” or “guard”) felt no better than those who did not manage to break off the relationship. In other words, a woman who suffered from psychological or physical abuse remains traumatized for some time after she parted with the “source of trauma”.
The authors of the work explain this by the fact that the offender is also the father of the child, and, accordingly, some contacts with him have to be maintained. In addition, parting with a despot husband is a colossal stress, especially for low-income women: you need to find housing, provide for yourself and your child, re-learn how to build relationships with others … But if a woman had relatives – friends or relatives – who her support, it was much easier for her to cope with difficulties and her state of mind turned out to be better. This means that assistance to victims of domestic violence is needed for some (quite a long time) after parting with the aggressor.
Arresting an abusive husband raises the risk of his wife’s death
The risk of premature death in women whose partners have been arrested for domestic violence increases by 64%. And these are not murders, suicides, accidents or death from beatings, but the most common, “peaceful” deaths from cardiovascular diseases or cancer. This is the conclusion reached by a team of criminologists who studied 25 years later the results of the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment, conducted in 1987-1988.4. The experiment consisted, in particular, in the fact that on appeals to the police of 1125 women who were beaten by their husbands, measures were taken on the basis of a random sample: in 2/3 of the cases the aggressor was taken into custody and sent to prison, and in 1/3 of the cases the policemen were limited to warning, and then they left.
Why does the arrest of an abusive husband hasten the death of a woman? One possible explanation is that arrest stimulates the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is already known to be associated with premature death. In any case, the practice of arresting the aggressor in all cases of domestic violence, as is customary in the US, appears to have serious “side effects.”
Glucose makes us less violent
In 2014, the results of two experiments were published that psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues conducted for three years.5. The study involved 107 couples. First, they were asked to fill out questionnaires about the degree of satisfaction with their relationship with their husband or wife, and then they were provided with glucometers to measure their blood sugar levels daily in the morning and evening for three weeks. But not only that. Each was given a voodoo doll representing a spouse, 51 pins, and a task: to retire every night and stick as many pins into the doll as you like, depending on how angry the participant was with the husband or wife today.
The second experiment with the same participants took place in the laboratory. Husbands and wives were separated and offered a video game, the essence of which is to press a button as soon as possible when a red square appears on the screen. They were told that they were competing with each other and that the winner in each attempt got the right to give an unpleasant sound signal that the partner would hear through the headphones, and how loud and long this signal would be up to the winner himself.
In both experiments, the researchers found a clear relationship: the lower the blood sugar, the more cruel a person, both a man and a woman, to a partner, the more pins he sticks into a voodoo doll, and the louder and longer beeps he gives. Brad Bushman explains the result by the fact that glucose nourishes the brain: when it is scarce, we cease to restrain aggression, because we become stupid. Therefore, the simplest recommendation for couples looks like this: do not start a showdown on an empty stomach.
1 «Sexual Infidelity as Trigger for Intimate Partner Violence». Journal of Women’s Health, September 2012.
2 «Normative Misperceptions of Abuse Among Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence», Violence Against Women, April 2010.
3 «The Mental Health of Mothers and Fathers Before and After Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution», Social Science Research. September 2010.
4 «Increased death rates of domestic violence victims from arresting vs. warning suspects in the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment (MilDVE)», Journal of Experimental Criminology, March 2014.
5 «Low glucose relates to greater aggression in married couples», Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, April 2014.