K. Daniel O'Leary

• Ph.D.
• Managing Director at Stony Brook University

Objective In order to gain a better understanding of the individual and joint impact of testosterone and cortisol on behavior, the present study was developed to test the differences in each hormone alone and conjointly between perpetrators of IPV and non-violent controls. Method Perpetrators of IPV on probation were compared to a control group of...

Objective In order to gain a better understanding of the individual and joint impact of testosterone and cortisol on behavior, the present study was developed to test the differences in each hormone alone and conjointly between perpetrators of IPV and non-violent controls. Method Perpetrators of IPV on probation were compared to a control group of...

Internalized heterosexism has been linked to poor relationship outcomes among sexual minority individuals. However, there is a dearth of research examining how internalized heterosexism is associated with intimate behaviors, such as verbal intimacy and affectionate touch. Furthermore, there are no studies that utilize behavioral observation to exam...

Commonly used scales of psychological intimate partner violence (ψIPV) for adolescents may not include sufficient items to measure adequately different forms of ψ aggressive behaviors. They may also characterize as harmful ψ aggressive behaviors occurring in non-conflictual or joking contexts. The current study examined a new scale, the Relationshi...

This paper examined whether risk factors commonly associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) are associated with female-perpetrated physical IPV and female physical IPV victimization among young Hispanic women. It also examined how emotion dysregulation, impulsivity, and attachment style exacerbated these relationships. Furthermore, it investi...

The present study assesses the extent of perpetration of physical violence in predominately Hispanic high school students in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. The relationship between adverse childhood experiences, exposure to interparental violence, attachment, emotion regulation, and impulsivity on two distinct, mutually exclusive, categories of seve...

Objective: This research examines associations between college students’ feelings of campus connectedness and two types of prosocial bystander intervention behavior to prevent sexual assault: party safety behavior and intervening in high-risk situations. Method: Short-term longitudinal associations between college students’ feelings of campus conne...

The speed, or efficiency, in which people communicate is linked to positive interpersonal outcomes. However, no studies of communication efficiency have examined romantic partners, making it unclear whether efficient communication is linked to relationship satisfaction above and beyond previously identified communication skills (e.g., problem-solvi...

This study examines different types of partner-violent males based on anger profiles. A cluster analysis of 483 self-reports completed by partner-violent men using the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI-2) identified two clusters of Undercontrolled and Overcontrolled anger profiles. The Undercontrolled men presented with higher pre-inter...

assessment of types of perpetrators of intimate partner violence via self report or criminal justice data

Background/objective: The outcome of a treatment program for a large sample of male perpetrators on probation for intimate partner violence (IPV) was evaluated with particular reference to the differential impact on family only (FO) versus generally violent (GV) perpetrators. Method: Official rates of recidivism for three years post termination...

The Bystander Behavior (for Friends) Scale (BBS) offers a promising method of studying prosocial bystander behavior in the context of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. The underlying structure of the BBS has only been studied in the development sample, which was predominantly White and from one university in the Northeast region of the...

Using a sample of 1,190 married Spanish community couples in opposite-sex relationships, this study evaluated a path analytic model exploring the associations between individual and dyadic factors and partner aggression for both males and females. Specifically, the perpetrator’s report of their individual mental health symptomatology (borderline an...

Parental conflict is associated with negative effects on children, and child feelings of involvement in conflict might exacerbate negative outcomes. Research has yet to explore the long-term impact of both parental conflict and caught feelings. In a sample of college students, linear regressions (N = 800) indicated that regardless of parent marital...

Prior research with a sample of male probationers indicates severity levels of one arresting intimate partner violence (IPV) offense are predictive of future frequency of such offenses and treatment completion. This study is an extended analysis looking at severity ratings across two IPV offenses to measure violence stability. The stability of IPV...

In this chapter, we explore individual and comorbid risk factors for child physical abuse and partner physical abuse, which include demographic factors (e.g., low income, young age, race, and unemployment), family factors (violence in the family of origin), and individual factors (e.g., alcohol abuse and anger problems). We present prevalence rates...

Previous research has demonstrated that college students who view TakeCARE, a video bystander program designed to encourage students to take action to prevent sexual and relationship violence (i.e., bystander behavior), display more bystander behavior relative to students who view a control video. The current study aimed to replicate and extend the...

This chapter first addresses the prevalence of relationship discord. Next, it presents data on the prevalence of intimate partner aggression (IPA). IPA comprises psychological, physical, and sexual aggression. The chapter focuses on physical aggression against a partner. The field of intimate partner aggression has sometimes been characterized by r...

In the United States, the judicial system response to violence between intimate partners, or intimate partner violence (IPV), typically mandates that adjudicated perpetrators complete a batterer intervention program (BIP). The social science data has found that these programs, on the whole, are only minimally effective in reducing rates of IPV. The...

Although a substantial body of research exists on men's perpetration of sexual coercion, research on women's perpetration is limited. The authors evaluated a model of women's sexual coercion perpetration in 448 couples. Women with greater body mass indexes (BMIs) were more likely to perpetrate sexual coercion against an intimate partner. Couple wei...

The present study examined correlates and program completion rates of Family only violent (FO) versus Generally violent (GV) male perpetrators of intimate partner violence mandated to batterer intervention programs. Probation records of 456 men sentenced to probation in Lake County, Illinois between 2006 and 2008 were examined, and the men were cat...

Sexual coercion of women is a common problem in couples that is often conceptualized as a facet of sexual assault or as a form of psychological aggression. Because psychological aggression is consistently linked to depressive symptoms, the researchers evaluated the unique contribution of sexual coercion victimization in the prediction of depressive...

The partner violence field has become stagnant with the common use of "power and control" interventions for men in relationships characterized by intimate partner aggression (IPV), though such interventions have received only marginal support. Thus, it is time to admit that "one size does not fit all" in the treatment of partner abuse and that ther...

This study examines, in a multilevel context, the influence of intensity of love at an individual level on couples’ mean reports of psychological and physical aggression in a sample of 2,988 adult couples of both sexes from the Region of Madrid. The percentages of intimate partner aggression considering the highest report of aggression in the coupl...

The purpose of this article was to evaluate theories that (1) weight-related abuse (WRA) plays a unique role in the development of disordered eating, above and beyond general childhood verbal abuse and weight-related teasing, and (2) the perceived emotional impact of WRA mediates the relationship between WRA and current disordered eating. Self-repo...

Intensity of love was examined in a representative community sample of 2,988 couples, from the Region of Madrid (Spain). Gender differences revealed no significant differences in intensity of love. Twenty-five percent of the participants who were in a relationship of less than 10 years and eleven percent of the participants in a relationship of mor...

A number of different methodologies have been employed to investigate the complex relationship between psychological and physical aggression. Herein, a method of unbiased recursive partitioning (conditional inference trees) was applied to a longitudinal sample to identify cutoffs of psychological aggression at baseline that differentiate between in...

The present study evaluated the importance of multimodal assessment of childhood verbal abuse (CVA) in pre-bariatric surgery psychological evaluations, and the role of CVA as a predictor of depression. Data from the psychological evaluations of 184 pre-bariatric surgery patients were retrospectively examined. Using two self-report measures and an i...

The goal of the present study was to investigate potential mechanisms of previously documented treatment effects for a brief, 5-session, problem-focused couple therapy for depression in a sample of 35 depressed women and their nondepressed husbands. The primary treatment effects were reducing women's depressive symptoms and their husbands' psycholo...

A critical examination is needed of the often mandated one-size-fits-all Duluth intervention for male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). The underlying philosophy of Duluth-based interventions is evaluated as well as the treatment outcome literature for this intervention. There is very little evidence to justify the current legal syst...

This study tests a model of physical aggression in a sample of 194 men being treated for physical or psychological aggression in the greater Madrid area of Spain. The prevalence of aggression in this sample was lower than in a US batterer sample. In the path model highlighted here, borderline personality traits and alcohol problems were identified...

The population-level decrease over time in newlyweds' marital satisfaction is well established. Yet decreasing marital satisfaction does not occur for all spouses to the same extent, if at all. In the present article, we test for the presence and predictability of a "honeymoon effect"-initially high, but rapidly decreasing, marital satisfaction in...

This study sought to examine (a) a meditational model of childhood abuse, adult interpersonal abuse, and depressive symptoms and (b) the impact of weight-related teasing on rates and correlates of childhood abuse. Charts of 187 extremely obese individuals seeking psychological clearance for bariatric (weight-loss) surgery were retrospectively exami...

To examine unique and relative predictive values of demographic, social learning, developmental, psychopathology, and dyadic variables as risk factors for perpetration of intimate partner physical aggression in a national sample of married or cohabitating individuals. Men (n=798) and women (n=770) were selected from the public use data file of the...

Although psychological aggression has been identified as a risk factor for physical aggression, the prevalence of psychological aggression is much higher than that of physical aggression. To further understand the relationship between psychological and physical aggression, the level of psychological aggression at which physical aggression becomes m...

Prevention programs for dating partner aggression should be based on knowledge about when such aggression starts and how it changes. Given the very few studies regarding such trends, changes in physical, psychological, and sexual aggression against dating partners were examined in 14- to 20-year-old Spanish high school students (N = 2,016). Overall...

Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at elevated risk for perpetrating intimate partner violence (IPV). Little research exists on the link between PTSD and physical IPV in Operational Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) veterans. A sample of 110 male participants was recruited from the Northpo...

Although there have been many studies that have examined the trajectory of relationship adjustment among newlywed couples in the United States, less is known about the trajectory of relationship adjustment in other countries and over other developmental periods of relationships, such as among families with young children. In this study, we used lat...

This paper provides a brief history of the assessment of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the United States. We examine strengths and weaknesses of the original IPV assessment approaches and describe the modifications and extensions that have been employed to improve our understanding of the multifaceted nature of IPV. We next discuss more recent...

The current study examined the roles of relationship processes and individual vulnerabilities in predicting dating aggression perpetration during emerging adulthood. Drawing from the contextual-situational model of courtship aggression (CSM; Riggs & O'Leary, 1989), as well as other theoretical models of close relationships, we hypothesized that ind...

The current study examined the roles of relationship processes and individual vulnerabilities in predicting dating aggression perpetration during emerging adulthood. Drawing from the contextual-situational model of courtship aggression (CSM; Riggs & O'Leary, 1989), as well as other theoretical models of close relationships, we hypothesized that ind...

Therapists have a responsibility to ascertain if psychological aggression, physical aggression, sexual aggression exist, and if there is fear of the partner. A fear of partner measure was evaluated in 100 couples who sought relationship feedback. Fear of partner's psychological, physical, and sexual aggression was related to actual reports of such...

Few empirical studies with representative samples have focused on the gendered aspect of psychological aggression and its sub-constructs of dominance and jealousy. Those that do report on gender differences, often fail to report on important dyadic factors such as whether the aggression is unilateral or bilateral in nature. Differences in psycholog...

Four hundred and fifty-three married or cohabitating couples participated in the current study. A meditational model of men’s perpetration of sexual coercion within an intimate relationship was examined based on past theories and known correlates of rape and sexual coercion. The latent constructs of adjustment problems and maladaptive relational st...

Caitlin Walsh is a Clinical Psychology student and K Daniel O'Leary is a Professor at Stony Brook University, New York. In this paper, they report on a large-scale study which explored the nature of the marital relationship for 475 mothers of children with autism and 62 mothers of typically developing children. As they state, there are often increa...

Underreporting of intimate partner aggression is an important issue in the interpretation of self-reports of such aggression, especially by males. However, both males and females are less likely to report negative behaviors about themselves than about their partners. With 863 adolescents from Madrid, social desirability had a small but significant...

Alexithymia is associated with increased depressive symptoms in both clinical and community samples. One way that alexithymia may lead to depression is through its impact on interpersonal relationships. Individuals with alexithymia report lower perceived social support, intimacy, and relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, poor relationship functio...

Extensive research has evaluated emotional abilities measures among individuals, but the validity of these constructs in a couples context has yet to be examined despite theoretical perspectives often highlighting the detrimental effects of poor emotional abilities on interpersonal functioning. The current study evaluates four measures of emotional...

Some individuals in long-term marriages report intensities of romantic love comparable to individuals newly in love. How common is this? Are correlates of long-term romantic love consistent with theoretical models of love? In a random sample of 274 U.S. married individuals, 40% of those married over 10 years reported being “Very intensely in love.”...

Objectives: Using the actor-partner interdependence model (Kenny, 1996), the current study is the first to examine: (1) the relation among 4 forms of family-of-origin aggression (FOA), namely, father-to-mother, mother-to-father, father-to-child, and mother-to-child aggression, and subsequent experience with physical intimate partner violence (IPV)...

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2; Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996) is a widely used measure of physical, psychological, and sexual aggression as well as injury and negotiation between partners. In this study, we analyzed male-to-female and female-to-male physical aggression using data from 453 community couples. We used item-re...

The link between marital dysfunction and depressive symptoms has been well established, but the link between partner violence and depressive symptoms is less clear. Further, little is known about partner violence and marital satisfaction in chronically depressed patients. In this multi-site treatment sample of chronically depressed patients (N = 31...

Individual and dyadic stability models of newlyweds' physical aggression were evaluated in a sample of 394 newlywed community couples recruited at engagement and followed for 2.5 years. Aggression in young couples was hypothesized to be a stable, enduring trait, consistent with a latent state-trait conceptualization. However, the findings indicated...

Motivational interviewing is a directive, non-confrontational intervention to promote behavior change. The current study examined therapist behaviors during a successful brief motivational interviewing intervention for physically aggressive college dating couples (Woodin & O'Leary, 2010). Forty-five minute motivational interviews with each partner...

Historically, the political context of partner physical aggression policy and research has focused on protection of physically victimized women and mandated interventions for male batterers. This emphasis is understandable when one considers the injuries and deaths of women by men. However, physical aggression against partners among teens is a very...

[Clin Psychol Sci Prac 18: 17–20, 2011] With some exceptions, it is important to accept that there are clear similarities across research-dedicated programs and those with less research emphasis at comprehensive universities. There was ill-founded negative publicity about clinical psychology based on Baker, McFall, and Shoham (2009) and the Newswee...

Motivational interviewing is a brief non-confrontational intervention designed to enhance motivation to reduce harmful behavior (Miller and Rollnick 2002). The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of motivational interviewing as a targeted prevention approach for partner aggression in emerging adulthood. Participants were 50 colle...

The aim of this study was to evaluate a brief couple therapy for depression targeted for mildly discordant or nondiscordant couples struggling with the negative impact of depression. Subjects included women with major depression or dysthymia who had husbands without clinical depression. Thirty-five couples were randomly assigned to the 5-week inter...

The role of partner schema in memory for laboratory-presented stimuli was examined to evaluate the existence of memory bias associated with partner sentiment. Highly dissatisfied (n = 30) or satisfied (n = 35) dating individuals rated, recalled, and estimated the frequency of positive and negative partner trait-relevant words. Word applicability ra...

Gender differences in physical victimization, sexual victimization, injury, fear, and depressive symptoms were assessed in a representative community sample of 453 young couples. The prevalence of any physical victimization experienced by women and men did not differ (29% vs. 30%), but men reported more severe physical victimization than women. No...

Cohabitation with a romantic partner has become common in recent decades. This meta-analysis examined the link between premarital cohabitation and marital stability ( k = 16) and marital quality ( k = 12). Cohabitation had a significant negative association with both marital stability and marital quality. The negative predictive effect on marital s...

Partner abuse is variously referred to as domestic violence, battering, wife beating, spouse abuse, spousal assault, partner aggression, and intimate partner violence. Partner abuse is a very broad term, most typically referring to three distinct types of abusive behaviors that occur within the context of an intimate relationship: physical, psychol...

Partner violence was almost unknown in the 1960s, but the field of intimate partner violence (IPV) has become widely known and there are now a number of specialty journals that cover this topic. The early stages of the field involved major surveys about the prevalence of IPV and many studies on correlates and predictors of IPV. It is now known that...

Approximately 100 Italian and American physicians and psychologists were asked to rate the frequency with which they would use various assessment methods and treatments for children with the behavioral and cognitive descriptors that typify a hyperactive child in the US. The label "hyperactive," however, did not appear in the description. Attitudes...

Dyadic influences among the diverse forms of aggression in dating relationships of adolescents and young adults have been reported in various studies. The goal of this research was to extend a dyadic model of physical aggression against partners to sexual aggression against partners. An urban sample of 4,052 adolescents and young adults of both gen...

This book is designed to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence, causes, and treatment of psychological and physical aggression in intimate relationships. The chapters are authored by well-regarded researchers who specialize in these topics. Each chapter contains a synthesis of cutting-edge empirical evidence along wit...

The present study examined self-reported lifetime antisocial behavior, family of origin violence, and impulsivity/behavioral disinhibition of 73 men entering treatment for partner violence. Participants were designated as generally violent (GV) (n = 46) or partner only violent (n = 27), based on self-reported violence against non-intimate individua...

The link between alcohol use/abuse and partner violence attracted increasing research attention in the past decade. Some studies reported a null or weak association between alcohol use and intimate partner violence, whereas other studies reported a moderate or large association. Using a meta-analytic approach, the link between alcohol use/abuse and...

(1) To assess prevalence of physical dating aggression and victimization among high school students; (2) to assess prevalence of mutual and exclusive aggression; (3) to determine whether aggression differs across ethnic groups and relationship type; and (4) to ascertain the likelihood of injury and breakup in individuals who reported that they were...

Alcohol use and intimate partner violence (IPV) are significantly related, but only a subset of individuals who drink are aggressive and relatively little is known about what moderates this relationship in community samples. Two risk factors, anger control and jealousy, were hypothesized to moderate the relationship between IPV and problem drinking...

Partner aggression is believed to be widespread in Eastern Europe although systematic evidence is sparse. Using data from the World Mental Health (WMH) survey in Ukraine, we present the first population-based findings on the descriptive epidemiology of partner aggression among married adults. Married men (n = 558) and women (n = 558) were interview...

This study examined the effects of marital dissolution on two potential outcomes, relapse into and recovery from major depression, within a sample that explicitly faces the recurring risk of depression. Among subjects who were depressed at the time of marital dissolution, Cox proportional hazards models revealed a five-fold increased probability of...

The modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (M-CTS), originally created by Straus in 1979, is one of the most extensively used instruments to detect violent verbal and physical behaviours in youths' and adolescents' dating relations. The aim of the present work was to analyze the psychometric properties of the instrument and to validate its...

This exploratory study was designed to address how multiple factors drawn from varying focal models and ecological levels of influence might operate relative to each other to predict partner aggression, using data from 453 representatively sampled couples. The resulting cross-validated models predicted approximately 50% of the variance in men's and...

Approximately 32% of dating college females reported that they engaged in physical aggression against their partners and that they engaged in acts of physical aggression more often than their male partners engaged in aggression against them. However, the females also reported that their male partners attempted to force them to engage in oral sex mo...

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) are widely used to measure intimate partner aggression. Various aspects of the CTS2 and its subscales have been examined, e.g. factor structure, internal consistency, and validity, but little or no evidence exists regarding the stability of the self-report of aggression on the CTS2 This study examines the...

In order to ascertain fruitful directions for marital therapy research, practicing marital therapists were asked to provide information regarding the clinical relevance of potential research topics. A structured questionnaire was mailed to 250 members of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. Therapists treating at least five c...

Abused wives are unassertive with their spouses, and it therefore might seem plausible to advocate assertion training for battered wives. In situations where the probability of abuse is elevated, assertiveness training with the wife might be ill-advised without involving the husband in this sort of training as well. The woman should be informed of...

Abusive couples, discordant couples, and satisfactorily married couples were compared on self-report measures of general assertion, spouse-specific assertion, spouse-specific aggression, and spousal physical aggression in their families of origin. Men and women in abusive relationships as well as those in discordant, but non-abusive, relationships...

To assess the prevalence of verbally and physically aggressive behaviors in dating relationships in a sample of Spanish adolescents. Cross-sectional self-report data were obtained with The Modified Conflict Tactics Scale (MCTS) from a representative sample of 2416 adolescents and young adults of both genders, between ages of 16 and 20 years. The re...

The presence of violent behaviors of a psychological and physical nature in dating relations was analyzed in a sample of Spanish university students between 18 and 27 years of age. The results indicate a high prevalence of both kinds of aggression in interpersonal relationships, revealing important typology differences between the sexes. Violent ps...

Agresión física y psicológica en las relaciones de noviazgo en universitarios españoles. En el presente trabajo se analiza la presencia de comportamientos violentos de carácter psicológico y físico en las relaciones de noviazgo en una muestra de jóvenes universitarios españoles con edades comprendidas entre los 18 y los 27 años. Los resultados indi...

Psychological and Physical Aggression scales met internal consistency and agreement standards on the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) in a randomly recruited sample of 453 married community couples with children. Moreover, partners agreed on the extent of psychological and physical aggression as much or more than they did on CTS2 Negotiation...

All empirically-evaluated partner violence prevention programs were reviewed. Most changed knowledge and attitudes regarding dating and sexual aggression, but few demonstrated behavioral change. Peer violence and substance use programs directed toward at-risk individuals demonstrate much larger effects than those directed at all individuals. Resear...

The Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS) have used different formats intended to maximize the accuracy and disclosure of relationship aggression. The original CTS presented items in a hierarchical order, seeking to establish a "context of legitimation." The CTS2 presented items in an interspersed order to reduce denial response sets. The current study use...