This research explored the relationships between the language that 86 married men used to describe their marriages, other personal characteristics of the men, and the men’s wife-directed aggression. Methods included linguistic inquiry word count analysis, temperament measures, an empathic accuracy-type paradigm, and signal detection analysis. Husbands’ use of anger words and egocentric words in describing their marriages, along with husbands’ impulsivity, critical/rejecting overattribution bias, and attentional disorder/ impairment predicted the men’s wife-directed aggression. Multiple regression and moderation analyses revealed that men’s use of anger words and first-person pronouns in describing their own marriages were unique predictors of their wife-directed aggression. Also, men’s critical/rejecting overattribution bias and impulsivity interacted to predict the men’s wife-directed aggression. Results are discussed in terms different wife-abuser subtypes and their implications for the treatment of aggressive husbands.
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