Implicit theories in perpetrators of intimate partner violence and assessment of partner violence offence supportive cognition with implicit measures of social cognition

• Main Author: Pornari, Chrysoula
• Published: University of Birmingham 2013
• Subjects: 150; BF Psychology
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.569755

This thesis proposes a number of Implicit Theories (ITs) for male and female perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) and, guided by these ITs, develops implicit measures to assess IPV offence supportive cognition indirectly. Chapter 1 systematically reviews the empirical IPV literature and finds varying levels of empirical support for six ITs in men and women, namely, “Opposite sex is dangerous”, “Relationship entitlement”, “General entitlement”, “Normalisation of relationship violence”, “Normalisation of violence”, and “It’s not my fault”, and for one additional IT in men only, “I am the man”. Chapter 2 describes the development of seven implicit measures and their pilot testing. Chapter 3 explored the psychometric properties of these implicit measures and found them to be reasonably reliable and valid. Chapter 4 includes two studies which assessed a wide range of IPV offence supportive cognitions with both implicit and explicit measures in two UK samples: (a) partner violent and nonviolent university students, and (b) male batterers referred to treatment and community controls. In both studies the IPV groups demonstrated more explicit offence supportive cognition than the nonviolent groups but this was more prominent in the offender group. Only the offender group showed more offence supportive cognition than the control group at the implicit level. The implicit measures demonstrated very good validity, and the utility of these measures with this type of offenders was highlighted. Chapter 5 concludes this thesis and provides an overview and a general discussion of the main findings, limitations, practical implications, and future directions for research.