Spouse abuse: social learning, attribution and interventions

Forty male respondents, 20 batterers and 20 non-batterers comparably matched for education, sex, age, employment, and occupation in a non-probabilistic sample, were administered the Conflict Tactics Scale and the Causal Dimension Scale in order to measure exposure to violence in both family and non-family environments and to determine how respondents attributed the cause of spousal conflict. The results demonstrate that batterers were exposed to violence in non-family environments, particularly with their friends, and did not differ with respect to exposure to violence and suggestions are made with respect to points of intervention.