Courtship Violence and the Interactive Status of the Relationship

Five hundred twenty-six students completed questionnaires designed to measure the use of reasoning, verbal aggression and violence as conflict resolution strategies. Significant differences in the reasoning and verbal aggression scores were found based on gender and on the interactive status of the violence within the relationship. No significant difference was found for the violence score based on sex but a significant difference was found based on the interactive status of the relationship. When the sex of the respondent was controlled an almost identical proportion of males and females reported that violence in their relationship was reciprocal in nature. The results of this study present a strong argument that violence within courtship should be viewed as the breakdown in attempts at conflict resolution and not as a phenomeon in and of itself.