How Can We Better Assess Peoples’ Motivations for Perpetrating Intimate Partner Aggression?
/Imagine your partner comes home late from work again and misses the dinner you worked so hard to prepare. You feel the anger build as they brush past you and barely say hello. You explode and begin to yell “MY DAY WAS GREAT, THANKS FOR ASKING A**HOLE! WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER?!” Research suggests a majority of people will experience aggression like this with their partners at some point in their lifetimes.
Unfortunately, most intimate partner aggression research focuses on the “A**HOLE!!!” part of that interaction and the potential for escalation into physical violence, with far less attention given to the motivations that drive the behavior (i.e., the reaction to the partner’s behavior, the building anger, etc.). Despite the ubiquity of motivations for aggressing against a romantic partner, intimate partner aggression research has failed to turn meaningful attention to these motivations.
Part of the reason why research has not meaningfully examined motivations for aggression between intimate partners is because no tools exist that clearly measure why people aggress against their partners. Existing tools only assess forms of perpetration while neglecting to measure the motivations for aggressing. Assessment tools that do capture motivations cannot separate the form that the behavior took from the motivation for the behavior.
This gap led our team to adapt an existing measure of the forms and functions of adolescent peer aggression (Little et al., 2003) to assess intimate partner aggression perpetration in coupled adults. This new measure — the Forms and Functions of Intimate Partner Aggression (FFIPA) — captures four distinct dimensions of intimate partner aggression as suggested by previous research. These include:
Two principal motivations:
proactive (i.e., instrumental, in pursuit of an ulterior goal)
reactive (i.e., in immediate response to threat or perceived threat)
Two principal forms:
overt (directed at the victim)
relational (directed at the victim’s social standing)
This is accomplished by asking respondents via a self-report survey how and for what reason they tend to perpetrate aggression against their intimate partners. Analyses are then able to calculate separately the degree of each motivation and form of aggression that a person typically tends to use and how these motivations and forms intersect.
Rigorous analyses indicate that the FFIPA measures these forms and motivations for aggressing well. Furthermore, initial findings provide support for women’s (compared to men’s) greater use of overt and relational forms of aggression perpetration. Results also indicate positive associations between known risk factors for aggressing (e.g., trait anger, hostility, relationship dissatisfaction, impulsivity, and problematic drinking) and each of the forms of intimate partner aggression. Furthermore, impulsivity and trait anger were positively associated with reactive, but not proactive, motivations for aggressing. This suggests further work is necessary to explore risk factors unique to proactive intimate partner aggression, an area of research need that now comes to light in part due to the development of the FFIPA.
It is hoped that the use of the FFIPA will provide benefits for both researchers and clinicians alike. The FFIPA is comprised of 36 items and scored on a simple 1-4 scale and can be completed in less than 15 minutes. Thus, it is a practical addition to survey batteries that assess intimate partner aggression. The FFIPA will allow researchers to examine the unique motivations of intimate partner aggression perpetration separate from the form of behavior used for delivery, allowing for the development of better interventions for intimate partner aggression. There is also the potential for gaining an understanding of how the interactions of these forms and motivations for aggressing predict subsequent outcomes (e.g., mental health outcomes) or “types” of perpetrators. It also has strong potential to assess motivations for perpetration in couples who present for treatment in order to inform treatment decisions.
Original Article
A free, downloadable copy of the FFIPA measure as well as its associated scoring instructions and example Mplus syntax may be accessed here.
Miklós B. Halmos is completing his Ph.D. in community psychology and is affiliated with the Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence at Georgia State University. He is broadly interested in examining risk and protective factors for interpersonal violence utilizing advanced approaches as well as conducting program evaluations of primary prevention efforts for violence.
