Research involving domestic violence has suggested that men and women tend to be equally likely to engage in acts of violence, though due to size and other differences women are more likely to sustain a serious injury from such violence. Deborah Capaldi, a researcher at the Oregon Social Learning Center wanted to study interpersonal violence in a controlled setting and was surprised by the results — young women in her study were four times more likely to initiate physical aggression such as slapping, poking and kicking.
Capaldi brought young couples in to her lab and gave them problem-solving exercises they had to work together to solve. Capaldi then recorded their behavior and analyzed who initiated physical aggression. She found that women aged 18 years old were four times more likely to initiate aggression than men. This effect gradually went away with age, until 26 when women initiated aggression only slightly more often then men.
Capaldi told The Register-Guard (Oregon),
Who were the primary initiators of such slaps, pokes and kicks? The women. . . . Women engage in aggression and we’re not doing them any favors by denying they have any part in it.
According to The Register-Guard, Capaldi was surprised at some of the acts of physical aggression they observed in a laboratory setting,
Capaldi said she and her colleagues expect some verbal arguments but were surprised by the extent of slaps, pokes and kicks as partners discussed such assigned topics as planning a party, where to go on a date, or how to deal with such issues as jealousy and lack of money.
If hit or poked, the men and women were about equally as likely to respond in kind. None of the physical aggression was severe, which researchers would have halted, Capaldi said.
Capaldi’s research is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Family Violence.
Finally, The Register-Guard interviewed for its story Margo Schaefer, who runs Womenspace which is a domestic violence shelter. Schaefer told The Register-Guard that there is a difference between men and women when it comes to violence,
The most common cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44 is domestic violence — you don’t see that for men.
The claim that domestic violence is the number one cause of injury for women or some subset of women is one of those myths that simply won’t go away. In fact, the number one cause of injury for both men and women are accidental falls. Domestic violence doesn’t occupy the second spot either, with that being claimed by automobile accidents. In fact, only about 1 percent of women’s injury-related visits to the emergency rooms appear related to assault by a male intimate.
It doesn’t benefit anyone to either downplay or exaggerate the extent of domestic violence as Ms. Schaefer and other domestic violence advocates routinely do.
Source:
Fingering the aggressor. Jeff Wright, The Register-Guard, January 29, 2005.