Affective responses to conflictual discussions in violent and nonviolent couples.

This study compared the affective responses of physically aggressive (PA), verbally aggressive (VA), withdrawing (WI), and nondistressed/nonaggressive (ND) couples during two 10-min problem-oriented discussions. Coding by outside observers was used to evaluate the motor-expressive components of spouses' emotions. Spouses' self-reports immediately following each discussion were used to assess physiological and phenomenological experiences during the discussion as well as to evaluate the external validity of the discussions. In three planned comparisons, PA spouses were compared with other conflictual but nonviolent spouses, all three groups of conflictual spouses were compared with ND spouses, and WI spouses were compared with VA spouses. Observers reported that PA husbands, compared with VA and WI husbands, exhibited more overtly negative behaviors and reported a more negative emotional state as well as somewhat more physiological arousal. The PA wives differed from the VA and WI wives in their escalating and then deescalating pattern of overt negative behaviors. Both ND wives and husbands were differentiated from all three conflictual groups by their low levels of negative affect, high levels of positive affect, and low levels of reported physiological arousal. In most respects, VA and WI spouses were quite similar. Discussion focuses on how these comparatively innocuous affective patterns might be related to extreme expressions of aggression.