How do empathy, impulsivity and verbal skills impact male-perpetrated dating violence?

Objectives: Following research on marital violence, Makepeace (1981) noticed that violence could also take place in dating relationships. This talk is an opportunity to examine intra-individual characteristics likely to foster or hinder male-perpetrated dating violence toward a girlfriend. By attending this presentation, participants will be able to better understand how facets of empathy, impulsivity and verbal skills are promising variables for both researchers and practitioners. They will also see multiperpetration patterns across types of violence.
Method: A sample of 230 male adolescents and emerging adults (Mean age 18.8, SD 1.8) was self-administered questionnaires investigating psychological and physical dating violence perpetration (Wolfe et al., 2001), empathy (IRI - Davis, 1983), impulsivity (UPPS-short – Billieux et al., 2012) and verbal skills (Boutard et al., 2010).
Results: We see patterns of multiperpetration, i.e. the more respondents perpetrate psychological dating violence, the more they perpetrate physical dating violence. Regression models show that specific dimensions of empathy and verbal skills hinder dating violence perpetration whereas specific dimensions of impulsivity foster it.
Conclusions: This study allows a better understanding of risk and protective factors regarding male-perpetrated psychological and physical dating violence. It also encourages prevention and intervention program to take a closer look at these variables to prevent male-perpetrated dating violence.