The serious individual, interpersonal, and social consequences of male violence against women signify the importance of marital aggression as a public health concern. Despite significant advancements in the development of theories that explain the phenomenon of marital violence, many unresolved issues remain. In particular, researchers have not fully clarified the role played by problematic alcohol use among wife assaultive men. While ample data suggest that wife assaultive men are more likely to manifest a pattern of maladaptive drinking behavior, little is known about how alcohol intoxication affects discrete instances of marital aggression. Thus, a long-term objective of the proposed research is to further understand the role of acute alcohol intoxication in husband-to-wife violence. In particular, this proposal aims to examine how alcohol affects affective and cognitive processing during marital situations that involve provocation, threat, and high levels of anger.
This aim will be investigated by assessing """"""""on-line"""""""" cognitive distortions, anger-related affective responses, and aggressive verbalizations during an anger-inducing think-aloud paradigm among samples of violent (n = 60) and nonviolent husbands (n = 60) randomly assigned to receive alcohol (.99g/kg), active placebo (.15g/kg), or no alcohol. An interaction between violence status and alcohol condition is predicted, such that intoxicated violent men are expected to articulate greater levels of global irrational beliefs, cognitive biases, hostile attributions, anger-related affect, and aggressive verbalizations, but lower levels of anger control strategies, relative to nonviolent comparison men. It is also predicted that violent individuals given alcohol will articulate specific cognitive distortions to a greater degree than violent individuals in the active placebo or no-alcohol conditions, as well as nonviolent individuals regardless of alcohol condition. Finally, it is predicted that among intoxicated violent individuals, articulations of irrational beliefs, cognitive biases, hostile attributions, and anger control strategies will discriminate between """"""""mildly"""""""" and severely violent men. The ultimate goal of the present proposal is to integrate these findings into emerging comprehensive models of marital violence in order to aid in the treatment of abusive individuals and in the prevention of the harm suffered by their victims.
