Personality characteristics of 99 domestically violent and 71 nonviolent men were studied, using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and controlling for premorbid history. Men with poor premorbid backgrounds from 3 groups (ns = 66, 12, and 23) showed more elevations on the Millon inventory than men with good premorbid backgrounds (ns = 33, 20, and 48). However, over-all, batterers showed more Millon elevations than nonviolent men. These findings point to the need to control psychosocial variables when studying personality characteristics of batterers.
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