Abstract
Conceptually driven by life history theory, the current study investigated a hypothesized hierarchy of behaviors leading to men's perpetration of violence in intimate relationships. Using a series of hierarchical regressions, we tested a causal cascade model on data provided by 114 men in a committed romantic relationship. The results supported the hypothesized hierarchy of sociodevelopmental events: (1) men's childhood experiences with their parents’ parental effort predicted men's life history strategies; (2) men's life history strategies predicted men's behavioral self-regulation; (3) men's self-regulation predicted men's perceptions of partner infidelity risk; (4) perceptions of infidelity risk predicted men's frequency of engagement in nonviolent mate retention behaviors; (5) men's mate retention behaviors predicted men's frequency of partner-directed violence. The overall cascade model explained 36% of variance in men's partner-directed violence.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | Evolutionary Psychology |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- intimate partner violence
- life history theory
- mate retention behaviors
- partner infidelity risk
- self-regulation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Neuroscience