FEMALE AGGRESSION TOWARD MALE INTIMATE PARTNERS: AN EXAMINATION OF SOCIAL NORMS

We investigated the effect of assailant gender on injunctive social norms (i.e., beliefs about what ought to happen) re-garding violence toward an intimate heterosexual partner. In a random-digit-dialed survey conducted in four languages, 3,769 community-residing adults were presented with five vignettes in which we experimentally manipulated character-istics of the assailant, victim, and incident. We examined the vignette variables and measured respondent characteristics using multivariate logistic regressions. Judgments about women’s violence against male intimates (vs. men’s violence against female intimates) were less harsh and took contextual factors more fully into account. The type of violence and the presence of a weapon played a central role in respondent judgments. Respondent demographic characteristics were largely unrelated to their judgments. Scientific controversy about men’s and women’s violence in intimate relationships has not abated since the question was first addressed in the literature nearly 30 years ago (Steinmetz, 1977). The debate is linked to beliefs about what behavior is typical, that is, to descriptive social norms about gender and about intimate partner violence. The present investigation extends prior work by focusing on in-junctive social norms—collective beliefs about what behav-ior ought to occur (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).