Intimate Partner Violence and Perception of Partner Hostility During Conflict Among Young Adult Couples

Romantic partners can be both accurate and biased in their perception of each other's hostile behaviors. In perpetrators and victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), documented deficits in social cognition and hostile attributions could contribute to greater biases. The current study used the truth and bias model to examine accuracy and bias in perception of the partner's hostility during a conflict discussion among young adult couples, and the role of IPV perpetration and victimization in this perception. Young adult couples (n = 178) engaged in a video-recorded conflict discussion. Using a video-recall task, participants rated their own and their partner's hostility every 30 s of the discussion. Results of truth and bias analyses revealed that individuals accurately tracked fluctuations in their partner hostility (i.e., tracking accuracy) during the conflict discussion, but perceived their partner as more hostile when they themselves felt more hostile (i.e., projection). Regarding the role of IPV perpetration, physically violent individuals showed greater projection and sexually violent individuals overestimated (i.e., directional bias) their partner's hostility during the conflict discussion compared to nonviolent individuals. Regarding IPV victimization, individuals who experienced higher levels of psychological IPV overestimated their partner's hostility and showed greater tracking accuracy compared with individuals who experienced lower levels of psychological IPV. Victims of physical IPV showed greater tracking accuracy and lower projection than nonvictims. Victims of sexual IPV underestimated their partner's hostility and evidenced poorer tracking accuracy than nonvictims. These findings contribute to understand social information processing during conflict among young adult couples, according to their experience of violence.