ArhevilleSurnrnmry.-The Hand Test, a projective test which can be used to assess an individual's potential anger, aggression, and acting out, was administered to 26 battered and 26 non-battered women. 9 women in the control group were battered, and constituted a third group, community battered. Analysis indicated that battered women displayed more acting out and aggression than the non-battered women and showed lessened capacity to manipulate the environment constructively. Results support previous ones indicating the prevalence of domestic violence in the community. Use of the Hand Test to assess states of aggression and other personality variables in abused women was discussed, and implications of the study presented.In an initial national study to address the extent of family violence in America and document the breadth of inner conflicts involved within the American home, sociologists Gelles, Steimetz, and Straus (1980) examined the wifebeating syndrome. Their findings, based on 2,143 interviews and eight years of research, show how domestic violence cuts across a l l blood lines, education, and incomes, and indicate thac each generation learns to be violent by being a participant in a violent family.Social factors related to wife abuse indicate thac the number of children, amount of stress, and the power distribution in the family correlate strongly and positively with the frequency and severity of wife abuse (Gelles, et al., 1980). One of the more common views about family violence is that it is typically confined to families who have a minimum education. Gelles, et al. ( 1980) conclude that the most violent husbands were those who had graduated from high school; the least violent were grammar school dropouts and men with some college education.Psychologists at Michigan State University staged a series of physical fights in view of unsuspecting passersby to test the hypothesis that a man beating a woman in public was accepted and perceived as a private matter between the couple (Straus, 1978). The researchers found that male passersby would come to the aid of men being assaulted either by women or by other men, but no passerby interfered when the assault was perpetrated by a man upon a woman. Straus ( 1978) suggests that "the male witnesses refrained 'Part of this report was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Louisville, 1982. We thank Dr. Edwin Wagner for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Send requests for reprints to James E. Kantner,
