Young Adult Reports of the Victim–Offender Overlap in Intimate and Nonintimate Relationships: A Nationally Representative Sample

Abstract

Little is known about the role of conflict management in explaining the victim–offender overlap. This article assesses the victim–offender overlap for adults (18-32) in intimate and nonintimate relationships, covering their relationship with their partner and with friends and acquaintances/strangers. Controlling for conceptually important variables, we explore whether different conflict management styles are associated with a respondent being in the victim-only, offender-only, both, or neither group (separately for verbal aggression, physical abuse for intimate and nonintimate relationships, and sexual abuse for intimate relationships). Data are from a nationally representative panel of U.S. households ( N = 2,284 respondents of whom 871 women and 690 men report being in an intimate partnership). We observed a high degree of overlap between victimization and offending across our abuse measures. We found a range of modestly consistent set of risk factors, for example, conflict management styles and self-control, for the victim–offender overlap for partner and nonpartner abuse experiences.

Relationships of Adolescent and Young Couples with Violent Behaviors: Conflict Resolution Strategies

“…Furthermore, our data show that the violence that they mainly use against their partner is psychological violence, with behaviors involving humiliation and the ridiculing of the other, insults, holding them back, invading their space and even failing to offer them affection as a sign of their anger. All of which coincides with the majority of the studies which reveal that psychological violence is the most predominant in the relations of adolescent and young adult’s couples, and in relation to the results of studies on the partner-actor which show mainly mutual psychological aggression [ 4 , 8 , 11 , 20 , 21 , 23 ].…”

“…The present study is a continuation of previous research i.e., [ 8 , 12 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], but includes two new variables: perception of the two members of the couple and used problem-solving strategies.…”

“…To date, one vision of violence has mainly been studied which has helped us to understand this problem, but which presents certain limitations, as there are others with different characteristics which are very frequent in dating relationships like for example, its two-way nature or mutual behaviors, in which both partners can acquire the two roles present in a relationship: both the man and the woman can be partner abusers and, consequently, the victim of abusive behavior in the same relationship and in the same scenario. Moreover, several authors have begun to focus on the study of the two members of the couple, analyzing the actor and the couple to thus discover the scope of their victimization and aggression [ 8 , 12 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. These studies have found low levels of agreement between the two members of the couple regarding their perceptions on occurrence and frequency of different types of violence.…”

The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model in the Study of Aggression and Victimization within Couples: An Empirical Examination in 361 Dyads

“…Couples with mutual aggression were the most frequent couple type, and had the highest levels of aggression, in accordance with recent empirical evidence on national representative samples (see also Taylor et al, 2019). In this type of couple, both members showed the highest rates of victimization.…”

“…Criminological studies label this relationship as victim-offender overlap and it has been empirically verified across a number of types of offenses, including IPV (Jennings et al, 2012;Taylor et al, 2019). Straus (2012) synthesized four reasons for the existence of mutual aggression or victim-offender overlap in the couple.…”