Emphatic inaccuracy in husband to wife aggression

The overattribution bias

Datos Bibliográficos

ID18970560
AutoresWilliam E Schweinle, William Schweinle (The University of Texas at Arlington, autor de correspondencia), William Ickes (The University of Texas at Arlington), Ira H Bernstein (The University of Texas at Arlington)
Año2002
Volumen9
Número2
Páginas141-158
Fecha de publicación2002-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPersonal Relationships (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1350-4126 • E-ISSN: 1475-6811
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1475-6811.00009
OpenAlexW1975062572
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas22

Is husbands’ wife‐directed aggression related to unusual accuracy (hypersensitivity) or to bias (being likely to inappropriately infer criticism or rejection) when they infer women’s critical/rejecting thoughts and feelings? Results of a study using the empathic accuracy paradigm and signal detection analyses revealed that the greater the husbands’ bias to overattribute criticism and rejection to the thoughts and feelings of women they had never met, the more the husbands reported behaving in a verbally aggressive way toward their own wives. This finding discourages the conclusion that maritally aggressive men are uniquely provoked by their own female partners, and instead suggests that they are biased to overattribute criticism and rejection to women in general. The strength of this overattribution bias correlated negatively with the men’s accuracy in inferring the actual content of the women’s thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, the husbands’ thematic accuracy (their ability to accurately specify which of the stimulus women’s thoughts and feelings really were critical or rejecting) was associated with their self‐reported marital satisfaction

Aggression · Criticism · Developmental psychology · Domestic violence · Feeling · Gender bias · Jealousy · Poison control · Psychotherapist · Response bias · Wife · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Human Factors and Ergonomics · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Psychology · Social Psychology