An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Dispositional Aggression and Judgments About Batterers Among African American Adults: Does More of the Former Influence the Latter?

As one way of examining the role of personality in reactions to domestic violence, this study investigated the relationship between dispositional aggression and attitudes toward domestic violence in one sample of African American young adults. Dispositional aggression was assessed using the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ). The AQ purports to measure four distinctive components of the construct. The physical aggression component was expected to correlate the most positively with expressed beliefs about wife battering. Results revealed that individuals who reported high levels of physical aggression were more positive about wife beating and were less punitive in their judgments of batterers. In addition, analysis of scores on the AQ and the Inventory of Beliefs about Wife Beating (IBWB) also demonstrated important gender differences on both scales. Implications of these findings for victims of domestic violence and their sympathizers are discussed.