A Policy Capturing Investigation of Battered Women's Decisions to Stay in Violent Relationships
Violence and Victims › Vol. 25 Nbr. 2, March 2010
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Summary
Based on theories of social exchange and cognitive decision-making, the current research was an initial attempt to analyze battered and nonbattered women's decision-making processes using a policy capturing methodology. Participants included 28 battered and 30 nonbattered women who responded to several questionnaires and vignettes about violent relationships. Overall, both groups of women reported they would be unlikely to stay in the described relationships. Further, the cue of violence intensity was overwhelmingly the most heavily weighted variable for women in both samples, and a comparison of subjective reports and objective policies found that both groups lacked insight into which variables they were weighing when deciding to stay. Results suggest that when making the intellectual decision to stay in an abusive relationship, battered and nonbattered women respond similarly.
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Extract
A Policy Capturing Investigation of Battered Women's Decisions to Stay in Violent Relationships
Estimates from the United States Bureau of Justice (January, 2002) suggest that American women currently experience almost 900,000 violent offenses by an intimate partner per year. Despite this being a decrease from the 1.1 million offenses reported in 1993, domestic violence continues to be a sweeping problem in American society.
Numerous investigators (e.g., Rusbult & Martz, 1995; Schutte, Malouff, & Doyle, 1987 ; Straus, 1978; Strube, 1988; Walker, 1978) have attempted to answer the question, "If a woman is being abused by her partner, why would she stay with him?" but the answer to this question is complex and yet to be fully understood. Many emphasize barriers to leaving abusive relationships, providing data correlating the decision to stay in an abusive relationship with economic hardship (Johnson, 1992; Kalmuss & Straus, 1982; Rusbult & Martz, 1995; Strube & Barbour, 1983), dependence of young children (Gelles & Straus, 1988), and lack of supportive resources from either the police or judicial systems (Gelles, 1976 ; Horton & Johnson, 1993). Although such barriers do make it difficult for many women to leave abusive relationships, we do not know to what extent women are considering these variables when making the decision to stay or leave. For example, is she really weighing a change in financial status against the decision to stop being beaten? One problem with asking these questions directly is that we have known for decades that there is a low correlation between self-reports and behavior (e.g., Wicker, 1969), so asking a woman why she is choosing to stay is likely to be just as unreliable.SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORYOne way to investigate a woman's cognitive considerations when deciding to stay is to conceptualize the variables she is weighing as a balance of rewards and costs. This is the premise of social exchange theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Pfouts, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Pfouts (1978), one researcher who has applied social exchange theory to spouse abuse, has suggested that most women go through a two-stage process of assessing costs and benefits. First, a woman makes a subjective estimate of w...See the full content of this document
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