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Sex Differences in Physical Aggression to Partners: A Reply to Frieze

(2000), O'Leary (2000), and White, Smith, Koss, and Figueredo (2000)

John Archer

University of Central Lancashire

The following points are made in reply to critical comments on the author's meta-analysis of partner physical aggression (J. Archer, 2000): (a) The theoretical dichotomy used in the review is one dearly identifiable in published articles, and the distinction between acts (aggression) and consequences (violence) is clearer than alternative definitions involving victims' perceptions; (b) despite the database containing many samples of U.S. students, there were sufficient other samples to draw meaningful conclusions; (c) the Conflict Tactics Scale may be limited, but in contrast to suggested alternatives, it involves clearly defined categories; (d) sexual aggression, although forming an important part of partner violence, cannot legitimately be aggregated with nonsexual physical aggression; and (e) there is a marked contrast between sex differences in physical aggression toward partners and toward same-sex opponents.

It is typical of a research area such as physical aggression between partners, where science and politics meet, that there will be contrasting research strategies. One view is that the evidence should guide theory and ultimately public policy. The other is that strongly held beliefs, derived from a politically motivated analysis, are primary and provide a guide for selecting and representing the evidence. The commentaries by Frieze (2000) and White, Smith, Koss, and Figueredo (2000) typify these contrasting strategies. The purpose of my meta-analysis (Archer, 2000) was to provide an evidence-based analysis that focused on both acts of physical aggression and their consequences, which have tended to be the focus of different types of studies.

Much of this reply is necessarily occupied with answering the disputed representations of my review and its conclusions that inevitably characterize an adversarial commentary. Nevertheless, I have organized it around the following general themes: (a) theoretical positions and definitions, (b) limitations of the conclusions arising from the database, (c) limitations of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), (d) sexual aggression, and (e) the implications of women's physical aggression toward partners for sex differences in aggression.

T h e o r e t i c a l P o s i t i o n s a n d D e f i n i t i o n s

I set out two apparently conflicting opinions as guiding my meta-analysis (Archer, 2000): either that both men and women commit similar levels of physical aggression toward their partners or that damaging aggression is mainly by men toward women. Although this dichotomy is accepted by Frieze (2000) and has been extensively discussed in published sources (e.g., Dobash,

I thank Nicola Graham-Kevan for comments on and discussion of this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John Archer, Department of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PRI 2HE, Lancashire, United Kingdom. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

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Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 1992; M. P. Johnson, 1995), it is disputed by White et al. (2000). Their argument conflated this dichotomy with that between biological and social learning influ- ences. They also referred to "developmental theory" (White et al., 2000, p. 691) as predicting greater male aggression: In support of this statement, they cited Crick (1997), a study involving the direct and indirect aggression of third- to sixth-grade boys and girls, which has little or no relevance to partner aggression.

Two commentaries raised issues about terminology. In the concluding section of White et al.'s (2000) commentary, they claimed that I endorsed the position that "men and women are equally violent in relationships" (p. 694). I (Archer, 2000) was very careful to state that measures of acts of physical aggression (on the CTS) should not be referred to as violence, despite this being the widely used term in the field and in these commentators' work (White & Koss, 1991). O'Leary (2000), who has been more careful than most to avoid the term violent in his research, also implied that I conflated the terms, which is not the case. They were clearly operationalized, with definitions derived from previous analyses of terminology (Archer, 1994; Archer & Browne, 1989). White et al. also disputed my specific labels, but this does not alter the important point, which is to distinguish between aggressive actions and their consequences and to avoid terms such as abuse and battering, which combine both.

White et al. (2000) suggested alternative definitions of aggression and violence. These involve moving from agreed-on definitions current in aggression research to the less precise way such terms are used in everyday discourse. Researchers use the term aggression to indicate actions or states involving the intent to harm. Everyday usage tends to involve a value judgment of the person who initiates hostile acts (as in aggressor). Similarly, White et al. seemed to want to restrict the term violence to its everyday meaning, namely, that the act is unacceptable or unlawful. This too would introduce value judgments into scientific analyses: One person's legitimate use of force is another's unprovoked attack. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of international relations, one of the examples White et al. used to support their argument. Likewise, on an individual level, the issue cannot be

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resolved by labeling only the one who started an exchange as violent or the aggressor, because this is often a matter of dispute between the parties concerned and depends on how the causal chain is viewed. The expectation that this approach would lead to anything other than confusion ignores evidence (cited in my review; see Archer, 2000) that physical aggression between partners is mutual in a large proportion of cases. The categories on the CTS mostly involve physically aggressive acts defined by the type of action they involve. 1 To replace thesemas White et al. advo- c a t e d - b y participants' own meanings of terms such as aggressor and violence would be another retrograde step, as there would then be little consistency in the categories researchers use.

Limitations of the Database

In their section

Sampling and Generalizability

(White et al., 2000, pp. 693-694), White et al. disputed my claim (Archer, 2000) that feminist researchers do not generally use the sorts of community samples typically studied by family conflict researchers. It is difficult to tell what they meant from the supporting references: One was a study confined to sexual aggression, and two others involved a recent study of navy recruits, the published version of which concerned only female victimization. The single study that did involve a representative sample of students (White & Koss, 1991) is the one clear exception to the generalization I made, that studies considered by feminist commentators do not generally involve the sorts of representative samples used by family conflict researchers. There is one qualification to this, which may be what White et al. meant. There are some large-scale community studies by feminist authors that involved only male perpetrators and female victims (see, e.g., DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998; Dobash, Dobash, Cavanagh, & Lewis, 1998; Mooney, 1994; Romkens, 1997). Obviously, these cannot inform the issue of sex differences. They do, however, show that the same researchers who criticize conclusions from family conflict research are willing to use and make inferences from similar methods when only women's victimization is being studied.

White et al. (2000) commented on the high proportion of dating samples involved i n the studies I analyzed (Archer, 2000). I agree that this is not ideal, but if it is a problem, it is one to which they have contributed with their large-scale study of relationship aggression among students (White & Koss, 1991). I say if it is a problem, because one of the purposes of a meta-analysis is to assess whether findings from different types of sample vary. There were a sufficient number of community samples to make such comparisons, and the results of these were highlighted in my review: They indicated an important difference between the situ- ation of the dating and longer term committed relationships. A hypothesis involving differences between the circumstances expe- rienced by women in the two groups was given considerable prominence in the article, yet neither White et al. nor O'Leary (2000) apparently noticed this.

Another comment on sampling, emphasized by O'Leary (2000) and mentioned by White et al. (2000), is that findings from community samples cannot be generalized to those involving high rates of male violence such as women from refuges and their partners. This is of course correct, but it is also obvious. It is the reverse of the more appropriate comment that generalizations cannot be made from data derived from extreme samples, such as

women's refuges and crime statistics, to the population as a whole (Goodyear-Smith & Laidlaw, 1999). If a sample of people is selected for extreme values on a particular measure, by definition, they form a population to which general conclusions do not apply. O'Leary also stated that information about battered women leads him to question the general conclusion that women are more physically aggressive than men to their partners. Again, this would seem to be the opposite of the legitimate inference, that generalizations cannot be made from extreme samples to the whole population.

There are two potentially interesting points that arise from considering refuge samples. The first is that the yery high effect sizes in the male direction indicate that the CTS (see below) is sensitive to differences between samples, as has often been disputed by its critics. The second point is that the women in such samples show moderate levels of self-reported aggression, indicating that they are not totally passive in the face of severe physical aggression by their spouses. The levels are comparable with women from samples where the men have not been selected for violence.

White et al. (2000) argued that crime surveys should have been included in the meta-analysis. In most cases, it would have been neither possible nor desirable to do so. The reasons for this are set out in the introduction to my article (Archer, 2000): For most studies it was either impossible to calculate effect sizes because the sample sizes from which the victims were taken were not given or else the values would have been close to zero because the acts were so infrequent. It would not have been desirable to calculate effect sizes from crime surveys because of the demand characteristics involved: Mihalic and Elliott (1997) found substantial un- derreporting of both partner assaults and serious partner assaults when the context was that of criminal acts rather than relationship conflict. Similar evidence was found in the large-scale Dunedin study (Goodyear-Smith & Laidlaw, 1999).

Data from crime surveys and other selected samples were presented as the proportions of perpetrators that were men and were discussed in the review (Archer, 2000). The inclusion of the U.S. National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS; Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998) in the meta-analysis, as advocated by White et al. (2000), would have been unjustified: not only does the NVAWS have the demand characteristics of crime surveys (because the emphasis was on violence and personal safety) but also it was presented as a survey on violence toward women, thus giving the message that men's victimization was not a concern.

White et al. (2000) made two further comments that must be based on a misreading of my review (Archer, 2000). The first concerns the exclusion of outliers (a standard procedure when examining overall effect sizes). They implied that this influenced the analysis in a major way, yet examination of my article indicates that it made little difference to the overall conchtsions and was not mentioned as an issue in the Discussion. All the subsequent cate- gorical and regression analyses were undertaken with the outliers included.

White et al. (2000) also claimed that I (Archer, 2000) misrep- resented the findings of Daly and Wilson (1988a, 1988b) when considering homicides. This itself is a misrepresentation. I sum-

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marized aggregate homicide data in Table 11 (see Archer, 2000) from three sources but did not use Daly and Wilson. I used the later analysis by Wilson and Daly (1992b) that presented data from the United States and other countries to show that women commit proportionally more spousal homicides in the United States than in other nations. Nowhere in that article do Wilson and Daly state, as White et al. claimed, that virtually all the women killing their husbands in these studies had acted in self-defense. Even if they had, it would not influence the figures in Table 11 (Archer, 2000), which were for reported homicides. Interpretation of the figures is a different matter. I included a fairly detailed consideration of the evidence for the, self-defense explan.ation of women's motives for spousal homicides in my paper, and I endorsed it. This was not acknowledged in White et al.'s commentary. On the topic of homicide, I seem to have been criticized both for what I did not say and for not saying what I did say.

Limitations of the Conflict Tactics Scale

White et al. (2000) made a number of familiar criticisms of the CTS, a measure that they have used in their own research (White & Koss, i991), as indeed have some feminist researchers when only male perpetration or female victimization is involved (see, e.g., DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998). The criticisms boil down to stating that the CTS physical aggression scale is limited. There is another CTS scale that some researchers, including White and Koss, have used. They referred to it as symbolic aggression, but inspection indicates that it contains items that would be classified across several categories according to modem aggression research (Crick, 1995; Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, & Peltonen, 1988). These are direct verbal aggression ("argued heatedly," yelled and/or in- sulted), indirect physical aggression ("threw something (not at anyone)"), and indirect aggression ("sulked/refused to talk"). It is therefore not clear what this scale was intended to measure. This consideration, along with the relatively few studies that have used the scale and the likelihood of ceiling effects for both men and women, led to the decision notto include it in the recta-analysis.

The characterization by White et al. (2000) of women as being more likely than men to show indirect aggression is incorrect according to the current evidence. The two studies to which they referred involved children, but those of adults have produced mixed results in terms of the occurrence, direction, and magnitude of any sex difference (Archer, Monks, & Connors, 1997; Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Lagerspetz, 1994; Campbell, Sapochnik, & Muncer, 1997; Green, Richardson, & Lago, 1996; Richardson & Green, 1999). It is also important to bear in mind that these studies generally involved aggression toward people who are not partners, particularly those of the same sex, which typically produces different findings (see below).

White et al. (2000) listed a range of hostile activities that could be undertaken by people toward their partners. Some of these might be included within current definitions of indirect aggression, whereas others are clearly outside even these wide definitions. They would be better characterized as control tactics, ways in which people seek to coerce their spouses using nonviolent means. Unpublished data indicate that the same individuals tend to engage in both control tactics and physical aggression (Graham-Kevan, 1999) and that this holds for both men and women.

White et al. (2000) repeated the familiar view that the CTS neglects the context and consequences of physically aggressive acts (Dobash et al., 1992). The CTS is, however, clear in contex- tualizing acts as occurring in response to an argument or disagree- ment between partners. It is not the case that they could refer to other contexts such as play-fighting, or unprovoked assaults. It is the alternative, supposedly context-sensitive concepts that lack clarity and operational definitions: It would not be worth review- ing the area, let alone undertaking a meta-analysis, if the only categories were those such as battering, psychological terrorism, and social disempowerment, advocated by White et al., because their meanings are imprecise and hence could vary from study to study.

There is a similar problem with operationalizing the other consequences of physical aggression that White et al. (2000) mentioned. It is clear from research on psychological trauma that the consequences of any form of assault go beyond physical injury. Again, it was necessary to choose measures that could be operationalized and that had been used in sufficient studies to make a meta-analysis worthwhile. There are insufficient studies investi- gating psychological consequences of physical aggression to have included this as an aggregated category, let alone using the diverse categories, such as employment problems and children' s quality of life, listed by White et al. I am not claiming that these are unimportant, but they are unsuitable for a meta-analysis, which has to be restricted to that which can be operationalized. I acknowl- edge that this is a limitation of meta-analysis. However, the draw- backs of the alternative narrative approach are well demonstrated by the paragraph in White et al.'s commentary (under Harm Assessment, White et al., 2000, pp. 692-693), where they cited 16 different studies from various cultures involving a wide range of variables and drew speculative conclusions based on an impression of the evidence that cannot be assessed by the reader.

White et al. (2000) commented on the problems of scaling involving the CTS. My review (Archer, 2000) used aggregates across all CTS items, either in the form of proportions of each sex committing any act or interval-level measures, which are usually a mix of frequency of occurrence and numbers of acts. It is clear that this represents only a beginning, and I agree that my analysis did not address whether men use more severe CTS acts. Individual acts require a separate analysis, which was beyond the scope of the initial one, both in terms of time and length of the resulting report. An important point that White et al. missed was that injury measures do address severity and show very different results from those based on aggregate CTS acts, thus demonstrating a contrast between consequences and act-based measures.

The most common measure in existing studies was the proportion of each sex showing any act of physical aggression, representing a threshold measure for any act of physical aggression. Where interval-level data were available, as they were in 25 studies, effect sizes were similar to those derived from nominal- level data, indicating that both measures of any form of physical aggression and those of the numbers of acts and their frequencies yielded similar sex differences.

In support of their contention that the meaning attached to aggression by women and men is different, White et al. (2000) cited research on beliefs about aggression. However, the very study they cited (Archer & Haigh, 1999) showed that instrumental beliefs about aggression were sensitive to the type of aggression

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(whether verbal or physical) and opponent (partner or same-sex other) involved. Earlier generalizations about men's and women's beliefs about their own aggression were based largely on an assumed opponent of the same sex. When an opposite-sex partner is involved, men's and women's beliefs about their aggression converge.

Sexual A g g r e s s i o n

All three commentaries agreed that a comprehensive account of aggression and other hostile behavior between partners needs to address the issue of rape and other forms of nonconsensual sexual behavior and suggested that a meta-analysis should include sexual aggression. White et al. (2000) suggested that such an analysis would "clearly detect a very strong sex effect in the male direction" (p. 691). In contrast, Frieze (2000) was more cautious and reviewed some studies that found sexual coercion by women as well as men. She also tackled some of the practical problems that such an analysis would involve. For example, sexual aggression and nonsexual physical aggression have tended to be investigated separately. Frieze also referred to my suggestion (Archer, 2000) that sexual and physical aggression may be more highly related for men than women and asked why this is. I do not know the answer but note that the tendency was found in one of the two studies that I reviewed. If there is any evidence that the two forms of aggression show dissociation among individuals or in their causal influ- ences, it is essential to analyze them separately. One of the fun- damental requirements of a meta-analysis is that categories that may be different should not be aggregated. O'Leary (2000) also appeared to advocate combining sexual and nonsexual physical aggression, along with murder, although it is not clear whether this was intended to refer to a meta-analysis.

I m p l i c a t i o n s for Sex Differences in P h y s i c a l A g g r e s s i o n Of the three commentaries, only Frieze (2000) acknowledged the importance of considering within-sex and between-sex aggression separately. O'Leary (2000) seemed to suggest including all types of aggression--to partners and to other opponents--together. White et al. (2000) applied findings from studies of general or same-sex aggression to partner aggression.

Frieze (2000) posed the interesting question of "why men might be more likely to engage in violence outside of close relationships whereas women are more likely to be violent inside the close relationship than outside of it" (p. 683). Bearing in mind the distinction between physical aggression and violence, there is a very large sex difference in direct physical aggression when relationship aggression is excluded. This is found using standard questionnaires of physical and verbal aggression (see, e.g., Archer & Haigh, 1997b; Archer, Kilpatrick, & Bramwell, 1995; Buss & Perry, 1992; Gladue, 1991), which are likely to be completed mainly with same-sex opponents in mind (Archer & Haigh, 1997a, 1997b, 1999). It is also found for aggression assessed by labora- tory experimental paradigms (see, e.g., Bettencourt & Miller, 1996; Eagly & Steffen, 1986), which are again largely concerned with same-sex aggression.

There are two studies that obtained questionnaire measures of aggression toward same-sex and opposite-sex opponents from young adults. The different findings with the two sorts of opponent

parallel those for relationship aggression and general measures of aggression. Gergen (1990) asked about experiences with acts of aggression among a sample of 150 people aged 18 to 20 years. Although opposite-sex opponents were not confined to relationship partners, it is likely that in most cases, they were, given that the questionnaire covered their last 3 years' experiences. Table 1 shows a pattern of greater frequency of most acts of physical aggression among male than female exchanges. Women reported only one act more frequently than men did, and this was scratch- ing. This pattern is reversed for aggression between men and women, with women more frequently reporting having punched, shoved, intentionally hurt, had a physical fight with, slapped, and kicked a man. None of the acts listed in Table 1 was significantly more frequent for men than women in opposite-sex aggressive encounters. This pattern is consistent with that found for the CTS among U.S. student samples (see, e.g., Marshall & Rose, 1990; O'Keefe, 1997).

A similar study by Harris (1992) asked a sample of 416 students aged 17 to 28 years to record which of 17 acts of aggression (derived from the CTS) they had used on others or received from others. However, a longer reference period was used (any time since 12 years of age), and the study is therefore likely to have included many childhood fights. Overall, broad findings (Table 2) similar to those of Gergen (1990) were reported: There were large effect sizes in the male direction for most acts when opponents were the same sex, but areversal when they were the opposite sex. The largest effect size in both cases was for "kick, bite or punch," which was more commonly reported by men in same-sex conflicts and by women in opposite-sex conflicts. Relying on victims' reports reduced the magnitude of both sex differences, as it did for the aggregate measures in the meta-analysis.

The two sets of findings, and Gergen's (1990) in particular, are important in that they demonstrate, within the same sample and

Table 1

Sex Differences in Specific Acts o f Physical Aggression Toward Same-Sex Others and Opposite-Sex Others, Calculated From Self-Report Data From Gergen (1990) Table H

Same-sex opponent Opposite-sex opponent Direction Direction

Form of aggression of effect p d of effect p d Physical fight M <.001 .94 F .005 -.45 Intentionally hurt M <.001 .65 F .02 -.39 Punched M <.001 1.01 F <.001 -.67 Shoved M <.001 .88 F .03 -.38 Hit with object M .001 .52 - - ns .00

Threatened with weapon M .04 .33 M ns .14 Slapped face M .055 .30 F .01 -.44 Slapped body M ns .31 F .003 -.49 Scratched F .02 -.41 F ns -.14 Pinched F ns -.06 F ns -.12 Kicked F ns -.16 F <.001 -.58

Note. The data are derived from self-reports of experiences over the previous 3 years, from a sample of 150 students aged 18-20 years and unmarried, d = effect size, values calculated using DSTAT (B. T. Johnson, 1989) from the numbers showing one or more incident--they are positive if in the male direction and negative if in the female direction; M = male; F = female.

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Table 2

Sex Differences in Acts o f Physical Aggression Toward Same-Sex Others and Opposite-Sex Others, Calculated From Self-Reports and Recipients' Reports

From Harris (1992) Tables I and H

Form of aggression

Aggressors' reports Recipients' reports Same-sex Opposite-sex Same-sex Opposite-sex opponent opponent opponent opponent Throw something .80 -.33 .65 -.20 Push, grab, or shove 1.09 -.39 .83 .29 Slap .26 - .74 .28 - .64 Kick, beat, or punch 1.47 -.62 .95 -.27 Hit with object 1.08 -.24 .72 -.09 Beat up .85 - . 12 .55 .30 Threaten with

weapon .28 -.08 .60 .27 Use weapon .21 .00 .41 .08

Note. Effect sizes were calculated from the frequency of the sample

showing one or more incidents. They are positive if in the male direction and negative if in the female direction. The data are derived from reports of experiences since 12 years of age, from a sample of 416 students aged 17-28 years.

with the same measures, contrasting sex differences in physical aggression for opposite-sex and same-sex opponents. Why this should be the case was the question posed by Frieze (2000). An evolutionary answer begins by recognizing that the sources of competition are very different in the two cases. Same-sex competition is, in males, more risky and more readily escalated to violent levels, as a consequence of the greater potential for reproductive benefit to which it can lead and the negative consequences of not competing (Daly & Wilson, 1988b; Trivers, 1972). Although there is some level of competition for resources and access to higher status males among females, the evolutionary stakes are not as high, because females are the sex with the higher parental investment (Campbell, 1999).

Conflict between sexual partners is in evolutionary terms concerned with different issues, such as infidelity, contributing resources, and signs of abandonment. Existing evolutionary accounts (e.g., Shackleford & Buss, 1997; Wilson & Daiy, 1992a) of partner conflict have tended to view it in terms of mate guarding by the male (a consequence of paternity uncertainty). This is almost Certainly too narrow a perspective because there are other conflicts of interests between sexual partners that are likely to lead to physical aggression, in particular, perceived inequalities in investment of time and resources in the relationship.

C o n c l u d i n g C o m m e n t s

The commentaries raised a number of issues connected with my meta-analysis (Archer, 2000), although many of these seemed to be based on misunderstandings or misreadings. My reply has therefore reiterated a number of points made in the review concerning the theoretical dichotomy underpinning it, the distinction between aggression and violence, the nature of the database, the strengths and weaknesses of the CTS, and the reasons for not aggregating sexual and nonsexual physical aggression. In addition, the marked contrast between sex differences in physical aggression

toward partners and toward same-sex opponents has been highlighted.

In the introduction, I endorsed the view, shared by Frieze (2000), that public policy decisions should be evidence-based rather than politically based. It is clear from their concluding section that White et al. (2000) do not share this approach, in that they are concerned with which evidence it is appropriate to present to a wider public. I would argue that in the long run, a more informed social policy can only be derived from a consideration of all the available evidence, whether or not it fits with existing policy statements.

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Received February 2, 2000 Revision received February 16, 2000