Associations of Gender and Gender-Role Ideology With Behavioral and Attitudinal Features of Intimate Partner Aggression.

This study examined the association between gender-role ideology (scores on a nonegalitarian-egalitarian attitudinal dimension) and features of intimate partner aggression, with attention to how this relationship varied as a function of gender. Undergraduates from a large northeastern urban university (N = 250) completed measures of relationship quality, gender-role ideology, psychological abuse, psychological victimization, physical abuse, physical victimization, and attitudes toward aggression. Controlling for relationship quality, significant interactions between gender and gender-role ideology were found for all dependent variables. For men, the association between ideology and aggression was consistently negative; for women, the pattern of relationships was more variable. Results suggest that the inclusion of gender may be needed to provide a clearer, more representative picture of the association between gender-role ideology and partner aggression.