Lay persons' versus psychologists' judgments of psychologically aggressive actions by a husband and wife.

Literature assessing knowledge of and attitudes toward social issues has demonstrated that mental health professionals and lay persons often differ greatly. To add to the normative information in the field of psychological abuse and to determine whether the differences previously found between mental health professionals and lay persons extend to this field, a sample from each group rated psychologically aggressive items by a husband toward his wife. For the 102 items, psychologists were more likely to label the behaviors as "psychological abuse," but this tendency was due to psychologists considering the behaviors as either "always" or "possibly" abusive, whereas lay persons demonstrated a bimodal response pattern of rating the behaviors as "always" or "never" psychological abuse. Lay persons were much more likely than psychologists to rate items high in terms of severity level, however. The two groups used different contextual factors for determining that a behavior was psychological abuse when they initially were uncertain that it was abusive.

A model for predicting dating violence: anxious attachment, angry temperament, and need for relationship control.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test a model incorporating anxious attachment, angry temperament, and attempts to control one's partner as predictors of the severity and frequency of dating violence. To date, these concepts have not been clearly established as having direct or indirect effects on dating violence. It was hypothesized that anxious attachment and angry temperament would influence the need for and attempts to control one's partner which, in turn, would predict a person's actual use of force. College students (213 males; 199 females) completed measures assessing these constructs. Cross-validation was accomplished through using two successive freshmen samples. Statistics indicated the application of the model fit well to both samples. All specified paths were significant except for the direct path from anxious attachment to need for control in the second sample. While exploratory, this model seemed satisfactory for explaining potentially causal relationships of attachment, anger, and attempts to control one's partner leading to dating violence.