Clinical Psychology Reuiew, Vol. 8, pp. 331-344, 1988 0272-7358188 $3.00 + .

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CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS IN MARITAL

VIOLENCE: THEORETICAL AND
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

Amy Holtzworth-Munroe

University of Washington

ABSTRACT. The present manuscript explores the relevance ofattribution theory to the stue of
marital violence and reviews existing rtata regarding attributions offered by spouses in violent
relationships. The data revealed that abused women generally do not blame themselves for their
husbands’ violence, however, t&y attribute the violence to unstable causes. Abusive men offer
external attributions for their own violence. Several factors (e.g., the severity, duration, and
frequency of violence) my inzuence the types of attributions offered by spouses for marital violence.
The relationship between the attributions offered and spouses’ reactions to the violence was
explored. For example, abused women who cite “love” or “economic hardship” as reasons for
remaining in their relationship are the most likely to stay in their abusive marriages. Methodologi-
cal weaknesses in the current literature are examined and areas to be explored in future research are
suggestid.

Researchers and clinicians have begun to recognize the magnitude of the mari-
tal violence problem (see national surveys of the incidence of domestic violence:
Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980; Straus & Gelles, 1986). New workers in this
area are frequently dismayed by gruesome accounts of violence between spouses
and by the fact that abused women often remain in their marriages. One ap-
proach to understanding such phenomena is to examine the causal attributions
offered by the spouses themselves; how do the partners involved explain their
violence and marital statuses?
While attributional processes are only one variable which might be examined in
this research area, there are reasons to believe that they are worthy of investiga-
tion. Attribution theory has proven important in understanding other clinical
problems, such as depression (e.g., Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). In

I thank Neil S. Jacobson for his thoughtful comments regarding this manuscript.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Amy Holtzworth-Munroe, Department of Psy-
chology, NI-25, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195.

331
3.12 A. Holtzworth-hfunroe

fact, such theories suggest that the attributional processing of an event will influ-
ence a person’s reactions to that event. Thus, the explanations offered by spouses
for their marital violence should influence their emotional and behavioral reac-
tions to it.
In addition, attributional processes have made a valuable contribution to the
marital distress literature. Spouses in distressed and nondistressed marriages offer
different types of attributions for relationship events (Holtzworth-Munroe & Ja-
cobson, 1985), and such differences may even predict later marital satisfaction
(Fincham & Bradbury, in press). Given the utility of attribution theory in under-
standing other clinical problems, the present manuscript will examine the role of
causal attributions in marital violence.
Within a marital relationship, there are two possible categories of violent be-
havior to be explained (i.e., the husband’s violence and the wife’s violence) and
two possible perspectives on the violence (i.e., the husband’s and the wife’s).
Thus, four resulting categories of attributions need to be explored: those offered
by wives for their husbands’ violence, by wives for their own violence, by hus-
bands for their own violence, and by husbands for their wives’ violence. In addi-
tion, a fifth category of attributions will be reviewed: those explanations given by
spouses for remaining in abusive relationships.
This article is divided into several sections, the first two reviewing theoretical
issues and research data, including the content of attributions offered by spouses
(for the five categories of attributions outlined above) and factors influencing these
attributional processes. The second section explores the relationship between a
spouse’s attributions and his/her reactions to the abuse. In the final section,
methodological issues are discussed.

THEORETICAL ISSUES AND REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL DATA

Researchers have examined the content of spouses’ attributions for marital vio-
lence along two attributional dimensions. First, data have been collected on the
locus of causality dimension (e.g., who or what caused the violence). A person
may attribute an action internally, to the actor, or externally, to some outside
circumstances or to another person. The second dimension to be examined is the
stability dimension, or how long the cause of the violence will continue to exist.
Given this emphasis in the literature, the current review focuses on these two
dimensions.

Wives’ Attributions for Their Husbands’ Violence

Predictions regarding the type of attributions abused women will offer for the
cause of their husbands’ violence can be derived from two different perspectives.
First, abused women are victims of violence and thus hypotheses from the litera-
ture on victimization (i.e., accidents, rape, and robbery) may be applicable.
Second, general attribution theory and research results may be useful, particular-
ly data on attributional processes in marital distress. While predictions from both
perspectives will be reviewed, Miller and Porter (1983) suggest that these hy-
potheses must be interpreted in light of the fact that spouse abuse is a unique
phenomenon, differing from both nonabusive relationship events and other vic-
timization experiences. For example, battered women are victimized by a person
with whom they are intimately involved. They are usually abused on multiple
 Attributions and Marital Violenc-e 333

occasions, having to infer causal responsibility from “multiple observations,” rath-

er than from a one time victimization.

Locus of Causality The clinical literature has generally portrayed abused women as
blaming themselves for their husbands’ violence (e.g., Walker, 1979). This hy-
pothesis is also supported by studies of the victimization process (i.e., rape or
accidents), which have consistently demonstrated that victims exaggerate their
responsibility for negative events (reviewed in Miller & Porter, 1983).
However, general attribution research suggests a different hypothesis, since
people tend to attribute good things to oneself and bad things externally (Heider,
1958). Similarly, marital research has demonstrated the tendency of spouses in
distressed marriages to perceive their partners as responsible for negative events
(Holtzworth-Munroe & Jacobson, 1 985)1 a relevant finding since many violent
couples are also maritally distressed (Rosenbaum & O’Leary, 1981). Together,
these findings suggest that an abused woman would not see herself as the cause of
her husband’s violence, but would instead blame him.
Offering yet another hypothesis, Hotaling (1980) suggests that spouses in vio-
lent relationships should hold the environment or situation responsible for the
abuse, since blaming each other would be difficult to reconcile with their sup-
posed free choice in staying with each other. Finally, given that abuse is a com-
plex, interpersonal process, occurring within the context of a relationship, abused
wives may attribute the violence to the marriage or to the interaction of the two
marital partners.
A number of researchers have collected empirical data on this question, al-
though unfortunately most only coded their data into the categories of self-blame
versus husband-blame. The number of women interviewed in each study varies,
from 31 (Cohn & Giles-Sims, in press) to over 400 (Walker, 1984). Similarly,
recruitment methods varied. While many researchers interviewed women seeking
help from shelters for abused women (Cohn & Giles-Sims, in press; Malhotra,
1984; Porter, 1986), some broadened their selection criteria to include additional
“self-identified” battered women (e.g., women referred from social service agen-
cies, or seeking therapy for domestic violence, or responding to advertising for
battered women: see Frieze, 1987; O’Leary, Curley, Rosenbaum, & Clarke, 1985;
Shields & Hanneke, 1983; Walker, 1984). While many samples contained both
women living with their husbands and those who had separated? the researchers
do not report direct comparisons of the attributions offered by these two sub-
groups. In contrast to sample differences, the studies were methodologically simi-
lar; researchers interviewed abused women, asking why their husbands had been
violent, and later coded the responses. However, what is most striking is the
similarity in results across data sets.
In no study did the majority of women blame themselves for their husbands’
violence. While the most frequently cited explanation given by women in
O’Leary, Curley, Rosenbaum, and Clarke (1985) was their own assertiveness or
disagreement, only 33% of women thus blamed themselves. The second most
frequently cited reasons, given by 19% of the women, was their husbands’ alcohol
or drug usage or psychological state.
Frieze’s data have been reported in several manuscripts (e.g., Frieze, 1978;
Frieze, Knoble, Zomnir, & Washburn, 1980). In the most recent report (Frieze,
1987) only 19% of women blamed themselves for the first violent incident, and
334 A. Holtzworth-Munroe

only 8% blamed themselves for the general pattern of violence. In contrast, 3 1%

of women held the husband accountable for the first violent incident and 41%
held him accountable for the general pattern of violence.
Similarly, Porter (1986) found that the women attributed more than 50 % of the
blame for violent events to their husbands. However, half of the women did
perceive some contingency between aspects of themselves and their partners’
abuse, when asked “To what extent do you think your partner was violent because
of something about you?”
In several other studies, the majority of women perceived that their husbands
were responsible for the violence (Cohn & Giles-Sims, in press; Malhotra, 1984;
Shields & Hanneke, 1983; Walker, 1984), or reported that they had not done
anything to trigger their husbands’ attacks and did not “deserve” the attacks
(Pagelow, 1981).
Research also suggests that abused women may offer relationship attributions
for marital violence. Eighty percent of the women in the Prescott and Letko
(1977) study felt that the blame for the abuse was shared between themselves and
their husbands. Some of the reasons given could be categorized as relationship
attributions (e.g., “each spouse’s failure to meet the expectations of the other” and
“lack of agreement over the appropriate role of spouses”). Frieze (1987) found that
9% of women explaining the first incident of violence, and 15 % explaining the
general pattern of violence, attributed the violence to the couple.
In general, the data do not support the hypothesis that women blame them-
selves for their abuse. Instead, the attributions of abused women are more com-
plex. Women often listed more than one cause for the violence and frequently
blamed both themselves and their partners, or blamed some aspect of their inter-
actions with one another.

Stability. Researchers have also examined the stability dimension of attributions

offered by abused women for their husbands’ violence. The data gathered demon-
strate that women make unstable attributions for the violence (Frieze, 1987;
Malhotra, 1984), assuming that it will not occur again. When women attribute
responsibility for the abuse to themselves they make unstable or behavioral attri-
butions (Frieze, 1978, 1979; Cohn & Giles-Sims, in press). However, contradicto-
ry results have been found regarding stability of attributions when women blame
their husbands (Frieze, 1987; Cohn & Giles-Sims, in press).

Wives’ Attributions for Their Own Violence

Studies evaluating the incidence of marital violence (e.g., Straus & Gelles, 1986)
have documented that wives engage in violent behaviors. However, feminist writ-
ers (e.g., Walker, 1984) criticize such descriptions, which were derived from
purely quantitative data. They argue that it is important to also examine the
context and intent of women’s violence, since clinical observations suggest that
women may be violent only in self-defense or to exert some control over their
battering (i.e., by provoking an attack they could control the time and place of
inevitable abuse).
Despite the important political implications of this debate, only two studies
have examined how wives explain their own violent behavior. Shields and Han-
neke (1983) found that 92 wives, whose partners were referred to the study from a
 Attributions and Marital Violence 335

variety of sources (ranging from psychiatric half-way houses to groups for violent
men) tended to make internal attributions for their own violence. However, this
finding is difficult to interpret since the locus of causality dimension was poorly
conceptualized, overlapping with a number of different attributional dimensions,
including intentionality and trait-state.
Saunders (1986) asked 52 women, most seeking help at a shelter, what percent-
age of the times when they had been violent they had been acting in self-defense or
to fight back. Results must be interpreted in light of this potentially biased proce-
dure, which led women to focus on these two specific explanations. Given that
caution, “self-defense” was the most common motive given by women for their use
of violence (mentioned by 30 % of women using nonsevere violence and 40 % of
women using severe violence). “Fighting back” was mentioned by 23 % of women
using nonsevere violence and 33 % of women using severe violence.

Husbands’ Attributions For Their Own Violence

The clinical literature presents the male batterer as minimizing and rationalizing
his violence (Sonkin et al., 1985), offering external and unstable attributions.
Indeed, general attribution research has demonstrated that actors tend to offer
self-justifying attributions for their own negative behaviors (Kelley, 1972). Such
attributions may represent self-serving motivation biases, either a conscious de-
sire to present oneself positively or an unconscious motivation to justify one’s
behavior. However, such attributions might also reflect informational and atten-
tional processing biases, since actors do not observe themselves acting, but rather
focus their attention on the situation and the other people involved Uones &
Nisbett, 1971). Note that these same issues apply to wives’ explanations for their
own violence.
Unfortunately, very little research has been conducted on the attributions of-
fered by abusive husbands. Shields and Hanneke (1983) demonstrated that 85
violent husbands were less likely than their wives to see their violence as caused by
themselves. Walker (1984), interviewing battered women, found that between 59
and 82% of the women reported that their partners “justified, rationalized, ex-
plained, or apologized” after an abusive episode, with the percentages decreasing
the longer the abuse continued.

Husbands’ Attributions For Their Wives’ Violence

Shields and Hanneke (1983) discovered that husbands made mostly external
attributions for their wives’ violent behavior. Since husbands also made external
attributions for their own violence, the authors suggest that abusive men have a
tendency to excuse the perpetrator, no matter whom s/he is. However, it is also
possible that husbands were aware of their answers during one part of the study
and wished to offer consistent explanations for both self and partner behaviors.
Clearly, more data must be collected before conclusions can be reached.

Attributions for Staying In, or Leaving, an Abusive Relationship

While many women first experience abuse early in their relationships, they may
continue to stay with their partners for years (Rounsaville, 1978; Walker, 1979).
In addition, women who finally leave often return many times before leaving for
336 A. Holtzworth-Munroe

good (NiCarthy, 1986). G’ iven these facts, it is important to explore why women
stay, why they leave initially, and why they finally stay away for good.

Asking Women Why They Stay. Several researchers have directly asked abused
women why they stay with their husbands, or return after leaving, and have
categorized the reasons given. Pagelow (1981) interviewed over 260 women, 90 %
recruited from shelters; Roy (1977) studied 150 women calling a domestic vio-
lence hotline; Hofeller (1982) interviewed 50 women either responding to a news-
paper ad or referred by other agencies; Strube and Barbour interviewed 98 (1983)
and 251 (1984) abused women contacting a counseling unit at a city attorney’s
office.
The explanation given most frequently by these women is the belief that the
husband will change and reform (Pagelow, 1981; Roy, 1977; Strube & Barbour,
1983); in Pagelow (1981), 73% of abused women listed this reason for staying.
Similar reasons which were commonly cited are “felt sorry for husband” (Hofeller,
1982), “dependence on the husband, other than economic,” and “love” (Strube &
Barbour, 1983).
Two other explanations were often cited by the women. One was financial
hardship (e.g., “no way to support self,” “no cash,” “nowhere to go,” “no resources,”
“children made it difficult to find place to stay,” “no job”). The second was fear of
reprisal from the husband; in Pagelow (1981) 12 % of the women said they had
returned because their husbands had found them and threatened harm.

Asking Women Why They Left. I was unable to find any study in which researchers
directly asked women why they left and how they were able to remain away.
However, based on interviews with 120 abused women in shelters, Ferraro and
Johnson (1983) outlined six situations that might serve as catalysts for women to
leave. These include:

1. a change in the level of violence, such that the woman realizes she is in
danger;
2. a change in resources, so the woman has somewhere safe to go;
3. a decrease in the husband’s remorsefulness and lovingness;
4. despair, or giving up hope that “things will get better”;
5. a change in the visibility of the violence, so that it occurs in the presence of
others; and
6. new external definitions of the relationship from others, such that the victim
is supported and the man condemned.

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE CONTENT OF OFFERED ATTRIBUTIONS

The content of attributions offered by spouses for the marital violence may be
influenced by several different factors. To date, this issue has only been examinl;d
in the attributions offered by abused women. It is becoming increasingly obvious
that the simple question: “Do abused women bl’ame themselves for their abuse?”
needs to be replaced with more complex questions, such as “Does an abused
woman, in this type of relationship, suffering this type of abuse, blame herself?”
Correspondingly complex questions may need to be asked for the attributions
offered by abusive men.
 Attributions and Marital Violence 337

Severity of the Abuse

General attribution research has demonstrated that more extreme behavior is

likely to be attributed internally to the actor (Jones & Davis, 1965; Walster, 1966).
In particular, more severe violence may represent a greater threat to wives’ self-
concept and result in a greater motivation to deny responsibility, or it may enable
women to be more confident that their husbands caused the violence (Miller &
Porter, 1983). Thus, both spouses may place more blame on the husband as his
violence becomes more extreme.
Supporting this hypothesis, Porter (1983) demonstrated that increasing severity
of violence led abused women to assign less blame to themselves. Frieze et al.
(1980) reported that severely battered women were more likely to blame their
husbands than those who had been mildly battered. In addition, women who had
been more seriously hurt by their husbands were more likely to see the causes of
abuse as stable (Frieze, 1979).

Frequency and Duration of the Abuse

The first time a woman is battered the abuse is unexpected and may be attributed
to unstable circumstances, by both the woman and her partner. However, research
has suggested that events that occur repeatedly are likely to be attributed to stable
causes (Frieze & Weiner, 1971).
Duration of abuse may also affect the locus of causality dimension. As abuse
continues over time, and the wife is unable to stop it with her own behavior, she
may assume less responsibility for the cause of the violence. However, she may
begin to blame herself for the continuation of the relationship, or for tolerating the
abuse (Miller & Porter, 1983). Shields and Hanneke (1983) suggest that abused
women may blame themselves when victimization initially occurs in order to
maintain the marital relationship, but may shift to husband-blame over time, as
they make an emotional break from the marriage. Supporting these predictions,
Frieze et al. (1980) found that husbands were less frequently blamed for the first
incident of violence than for the worst incident. However, neither Porter (1983)
nor Walker (1984) found a relationship between degree of self-blame and duration
of violence.

Therapy

Many therapists insist that the husband alone is responsible for his abusive behav-
iors (Sonkin, Martin, & Walker, 1985). Th us, attributions may change based on
the stage of therapy in which spouses are engaged (Brickman et al., 1982). For
example, it would be predicted that men in therapy would accept more responsi-
bility for their abuse, while continuing to view the causes of abuse as unstable
(i.e., changeable, th us the need for therapy). Unfortunately, no research has yet
examined the impact of therapy on attributions for marital violence.

Type of Abuse and Events Assessed

Various forms of abuse (psychological, physical, and sexual) may lead to different
types of attributions; this issue has not been examined empirically. However, data
have demonstrated that attributions vary depending on the level of specificity with
which the violence is assessed. Thus, abused women are more likely to blame
338 A. Ho&worth-Munroe

their husbands (Frieze et al., 1980) and less likely to blame themselves (Frieze,
1987; Porter, 1986) for the general pattern of violence than they are for specific
abusive episodes.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONTENT OF ATTRIBUTIONS AND

EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS TO ABUSE
The clinical importance of attributions rests upon two assumptions: (1) that
spouses do indeed make attributions for the cause of their marital violence, and
(2) that these attributions influence their feelings and behaviors about the abuse
and the relationship. Recent evidence suggests that these assumptions may need
more empirical examination. For example, not all spouses offer attributions for
violence; between 11% and 35% of women interviewed do not know why their
husbands had been violent (Frieze, 1987; Hofeller, 1982). Given such data, Miller
and Porter (1983) note that “victims may vary greatly in their concern with
explaining their fates.”
In addition, Miller and Porter (1983) caution that the role of causal attributions
in determining a woman’s coping may be small relative to other factors in her life,
such as economic and physical threats. For example, regardless of whom a woman
blames for causing her abuse, if she has no money it is unlikely that she will be
able to leave her husband. Indeed, Porter (1986) found that neither wives’ per-
ceived contingency between themselves and the abuse nor self-blame significantly
correlated with measures of affect, while Malhotra (1984) found that neither locus
nor stability of attributions significantly predicted an abused woman’s general
mental health or self-esteem. In Frieze (1979), the type of attribution offered by
abused women was not related to their reported coping strategies, since the most
typical strategy for all women was to try and change their own behavior.
In contrast, the data reviewed in this section suggest the usefulness of exploring
the relationship between the content of attributions offered by spouses and their
reactions to the violence. However, while these relationships have been demon-
strated, no direction of causality can be assumed until longitudinal work is com-
pleted, since current data are correlational.

Wives’ Attributions for Their Husbands’ Violence

Attributing abuse to various sources ‘may lead to different outcomes for abused
women. For example, perceiving the relationship or the husband as responsible
for the violence might lead to negative feelings about the marriage and a greater
willingness to leave. In fact, Frieze (1979) found that women blaming their hus-
bands for their violence were more likely to want to leave such relationships than
women who did not. In contrast, perceiving the situation as causing the violence
would make it easier to “forgive and forget,” and thus stay.
Most authors have focused attention on the impact of self-blame on abused
women; self-blame has been hypothesized to lead to either of two opposing out-
comes. Clinicians have traditionally believed that self-blame for negative events
leads to depression and learned helplessness behaviors (Abramson et al., 1978;
Walker, 1979). H owever, the literature on victimization consistently demonstrates
that degree of victim self-blame correlates positively with subsequent coping
(Miller & Porter, 1983). For example, victims of accidents who blamed themselves
 Akbutions and Marital Violence 339

were found to be coping better than those who denied responsibility for the
accident (Bulman & Wortman, 1977).
Various hypotheses have been offered to explain the relationship between self-
blame and increased coping (as outlined in Miller & Porter, 1983). First, people
need to impose meaning on significant events, and self-blame can give meaning to
events which are otherwise incomprehensible (Silver & Wortman, 1980). A sec-
ond viewpoint is that self-blame helps victims to gain control over their lives.
Holding themselves responsible for events in their past enables them to believe
that they can control future events (Wortman, 1976). Finally, victims may accept
blame in order to maintain their “just world” hypothesis (Lerner, 1980), preferring
to believe that they are guilty rather than admit that life is unfair and that bad
events can occur by chance.
Two distinctions may help to explain the discrepant findings regarding self-
blame in the depression and victimization literatures: Porter’s (1986) distinction
between “blame” and “causality” and Janoff-Bulman’s (1979) distinction between
behavioral and characterological self-blame. Porter (1986) believes that blame
carries a moral evaluation and thus self-blame may lead abused women to feel
worthless. In contrast, attributing causality to oneself may allow the woman to feel
that she has some control over her situation. Indeed, Porter’s data revealed that
women’s blame for their abuse was not related to their coping, but women per-
ceiving a contingency between themselves and the abuse were coping better than
those who did not.
According to Janoff-Bulman (1979), behavioral self-blame attributes events to
specific and controllable actions, which suggests that the victim may be able to
control her behaviors in the future, thus changing the outcome of events. In
contrast, characterological self-blame attributes events to an enduring quality or
trait, indicating that change is unlikely and leading to feelings of depression and
helplessness.
While theoretically useful, Miller and Porter (1983) found it difficult to distin-
guish characterological and behavioral attributions when coding data. For exam-
ple, some women blamed recurrent behavior (e.g., “I am always critical of him”),
which was difficult to distinguish from character (e.g., “I am a critical person”). To
further complicate matters, Porter (1981) found that women who attributed their
husbands’ violence to some valued quality of themselves (e.g., “I am indepen-
dent”) were coping better than those who made attributions to negative personal
qualities.

Stability. Frieze (1979) h as outlined some of the reactions predicted to result from
attributions varying along the stability dimension. Women who view the cause of
abuse as stable are more likely to feel depressed and helpless, believing that their
situation will not change. Yet these women may also be the most likely to leave,
since change is not a possibility. Frieze (1979) found that women making unstable
attributions tended to return to their husbands after leaving, while women seeing
the causes of their abuse as stable were the most likely to want to leave their
partners and made more attempts to leave.

LOCUSand Stability Combined. Wives’ responses to abuse might be best predicted

from a combination of the stability and locus dimensions (Frieze, 1979). For
example, a woman making unstable attributions may blame herself and try to
340 A. Holtzworth-A&roe

change her own behavior, perhaps seeking therapy, may blame her husband and
try to help him change, or may blame her relationship and seek marital therapy. If
she blames the environment, she may try to change the situation or may decide to
“wait it out” until the situation changes.
In contrast, a woman who makes stable attributions and also blames herself
may respond with depression and helplessness. However, if she believes that stable
husband, relationship, or environmental factors are causing the abuse, she may
choose to leave the relationship, believing that nothing else can be done.
Supporting such predictions, Frieze (1979) found that women who attributed
their abuse to stable characteristics of their husbands expressed a desire to leave
their relationships. Women who attributed the violence to themselves, especially
to stable factors, were more likely to seek marital therapy. However, other results
have not been predicted. For example, Cohn and Giles-Sims (in press) found that
women who made characterological attributions to their husbands were likely to
return to their husbands, while women making behavioral attributions to them-
selves were more likely to leave and remain away.

Wives’ Attributions for Their Own Violence; Husbands’ Attributions for Husbands’
and Wives’ Violence

No research has yet examined the relationship between a subject’s attributions for
violence and his/her reactions to the violence for the next three categories of
attributions: wives’ attributions for their own violence, husbands’ attributions for
their own violence, or husbands’ attributions for wives’ violence. However, such
attributions may be important. For example, spouses who attribute their own
violence to external or unstable factors would be predicted to be the least worried
about their violence, and the least willing to seek, and remain in, therapy.

Attributions for Staying in, or leaving, an Abusive Relationship

Strube and Barbour (1983; 1984) conducted two studies examining the relation-
ship between the reasons abused women gave for staying in their relationship and
their later marital status, at l-18 months after the initial assessment. In the first
study, 75 ‘$& of the women citing “partner had promised to change,” 61% citing
“dependency other than economic,” and 50% citing “for the sake of the children”
as reasons to stay had in fact left their relationships at follow-up. In contrast, 65 %
of the women citing “love” and 82% of the women citing “economic hardship” as
reasons to stay remained in their marriages. Similarly, in the second study, the
women who remained with their partners at follow-up were the most likely to have
reported at intake that they stayed because of economic hardship, love, or because
they had nowhere else to go.

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Examining Attributions from Multiple Perspectives

Research regarding attributions for marital violence has almost exclusively exam-
ined the attributions offered by wives for their husbands’ violence, with some
recent attention on why abused women stay in their relationships. Future re-
searchers should examine husbands’ attributions for their own and their wives’
 Attributions and Marital Violence 341

violence and wives’ attributions for their own violence. Additional areas to be
explored include the explanations offered by abusive men for remaining in their
relationships and the reasons given by both spouses for leaving and staying away
from their partners.
Most of the research in this area has only examined the content of attributions
along the locus of causality and stability dimensions. However, other attributional
dimensions, important in research on marital distress, might profitably be mea-
sured in future marital violence work.
The globality dimension, whether the cause of the violence is seen as present in
many situations or specific to one particular situation, may be important. It is
predicted (Frieze, 1979) that a woman who views the cause of her husband’s
violence as global is more likely to feel depressed. If she also blames herself, she
may not leave her husband, feeling that the same problem will exist in other
future relationships. In the only study to examine this dimension (Malhotra,
1984), the globality of attributions made by battered women was positively related
to generalizability of helplessness effects on an anagram solutions test.
Additionally, the husband’s intmtiomlit_y in acting violently has not been directly
assessed. If a violent action was considered intentional, it may also represent
either positive intent (e.g., “He was trying to help me be a better wife”) or
negative intent (e.g., “He really wanted to humiliate me”). A similar dimension is
voluntariness: whether the actor had control over his/her behavior (e.g., “He just lost
control and didn’t know what he was doing”). These dimensions would help
explore the hypothesis that abusive men rationalize their violence, since abusive
men would be expected to offer unintentional and involuntary attributions for
their violence.
Future researchers might more carefully distinguish between “causality” and
“responsibility” (Fincham & Jaspers, 1980). “C ausality” refers to the search for the
origin of an action and is often based on a perceived contingency or connection
between events. However, “responsibility” concerns accountability for an action or
for the consequences of that action. While causality may be a condition for
attributing responsibility, “One could be held responsible for the consequences of
behavior, even though one did not cause them” (Cohn & Giles-Sims, in press,
p.4). Thus, an abused woman may believe that she helped to ca’use her abuse
(e.g., “I egged h’im on during the argument”) yet also may believe that her
husband is ultimately responsible for his actions (e.g., “He’s the one who needs to
get help”). Past researchers have tended to use these terms interchangeably.

Measurement Instruments

In order to establish the importance of attributional processes in marital violence,

one must first ask whether spouses engage in unsolicited attributional activity for
the violence? This issue has not yet been examined, since previous researchers
directly solicited attributions, asking subjects to list the reasons for violence.
Future researchers should utilize measures of unsolicited attributional activity
(see Harvey, Yarkin, Lightner, & Town, 1980 or Holtzworth-Munroe &Jacobson,
1985).
Even when directly soliciting attributions, past researchers have almost exclu-
sively relied on an interview format, possibly introducing interviewer biases. In
addition, they have utilized only coders’ ratings of the attributions, rather than the
342 A. Holtrworth-Munroe

subjects’ own ratings. In future work, standardized attribution questionnaires,

asking subjects to list their explanations and to code them along various dimen-
sions, could be utilized to examine attributional dimensions from the subject’s
perspective (see Holtzworth-Munroe &Jacobson, 1985).
If the relationship between the types of attributions offered by spouses and their
reactions to the violence are to be demonstrated, more systematic study is needed.
Such work should examine a variety of potential responses to the violence, includ-
ing: marital status, steps taken to end the relationship, marital satisfaction, seff-
esteem, depression, and general psychopathology.

Sampling

The majority of studies reviewed have examined women in shelters or therapy.

Such women are a unique group; they have identified abuse as a problem, been
willing to seek help, and, if in a shelter, been willing to leave their husband. Their
attributions may be different from other groups of abused women, such as those
still living with their partner or those who do not view abuse as a problem. Thus,
the generalizability of the current findings to other groups of abused women
requires further empirical investigations

Longitudinal Work

Few prospective studies have been conducted regarding the relationship of attri-
butions to coping. Cohn and Giles-Sims (in press} correlated types of attributions
made by abused women to their marital status six months later, with often surpris-
ing results. Strube and Barbour (1983; 1984) correlated women’s explanations for
why they stay with marital status at a follow-up. However, many questions regard-
ing the relationship of attributions to later reactions remain unanswered. Future
researchers could readminister both attribution questionnaires and measures of
emotional coping at follow-ups. For subjects not in therapy, it would thus be
possible to directly examine whether attributional content changes with changes
in the severity, frequency, or duration of abuse. For subjects in therapy, such
measures would help assess treatment efficacy; do spouses begin to view the
husband as responsible for his violence?

COMMENT

At the present time, our understanding of the causes of marital violence is limited
and many questions exist. While it is important to gather more information, it is
also imperative that researchers and clinicians engage in conceptual and theoreti-
cal thinking. How does spouse abuse differ from both marital distress and other
victimization experiences? How will these differences affect the types of attribu-
tions offered by spouses? Which factors affect the types of attributions offered and
which will intervene between attributional processing and resulting emotional and
behavioral reactions? Such questions need to be considered and incorporated into
well conceptualized research designs if we are to fully explore the role of attribu-
tional processes in marital violence.
 Attributions and Marital Violence 343

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