Abstract
This study offers a useful step toward conceptualizing and understanding control-motivated IPV as a device to control partners within specific motivating and facilitating contexts. The research literature suggests that desire for control increases perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women, that attitudes supporting male dominance and backlash are associated with IPV against women, and that women’s status in communities is associated with men’s IPV perpetration risk. Recent literature argues that the interpersonal context of coercive control from the victim’s perspective is central to understanding IPV. Yet, there are substantial gaps in the literature on how the contextual status of women facilitates IPV and how context might relate to men’s attitudes and desire for control. The literature lacks theory to explain how women’s contexts influence men to seek control over women and how differences in women’s contexts might influence IPV perpetration. To explore these gaps in the knowledge base, this study examines the utility of a multidimensional conceptualization of the macro context of women’s controllability in explaining IPV perpetration against women. This study examines how the macro context of women’s controllability influences men’s control-seeking; the mediating effect of men’s attitudes of male dominance and backlash on the relationship between macro context of women’s controllability and men’s control-seeking; and the effect of macro context of women’s controllability on the relationship between men’s control-seeking and men’s IPV perpetration. Multi-level analyses were conducted linking existing data about the macro context women’s controllability in counties to data from 2,920 male undergraduate college students from a state-funded University in Florida. The college student data includes information on psychological and physical IPV perpetration, control-seeking and IPV attributions, and attitudes about male dominance and backlash. Results indicate that control-seeking mediates the relationship between the macro context of women’s controllability and IPV. In addition, macro contexts of women’s controllability influence men’s control-seeking over and above the effects of attitudes supporting male dominance or backlash. Men from counties where women overall had greater controllability were on average more control-seeking. When women had greater power in counties, men were less likely to perpetrate psychological abuse, after taking into account control-seeking. Men with higher levels of control-seeking who were from counties where women shared greater power and independence tended to be less likely to perpetrate physical IPV. The results are promising and underscore the need for further research into macro contextual influences with additional individual level data collected as well as more refined community context delineations. The results are also hopeful for IPV prevention science, especially for community level prevention efforts.
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