Men's attitudes condoning marital aggression: A moderator between family of origin abuse and aggression against female partners

This study examines whether the often-cited association between experiencin g physical abuse in one's family of origin and behaving aggressively toward one's intimate female partner is moderated by attitudes condoning husband to wife aggression. Forty-seven men rated the justifiability of male-to-fem ale aggression for 25 specific conditions. Attitudes condoning aggression w ere not correlated with either history of abuse or current abuse but the in teraction between attitudes and history of exposure accounted for significa nt variance in physical and emotional aggression inflicted on adult female partners. For men who condone physical aggression, there was a strong corre lation between abuse in the family of origin and actual physical and emotio nal aggression toward female partners, whereas for men who do not condone a ggression, there were no significant correlations. These data illustrate ho w the significance of one risk factor, such as history of abuse, changes as a function of another variable-namely, attitudes condoning male-to-female aggression.