Michael Johnson

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · Department of Sociology

After a brief expression of my gratitude for the support I have received over the years, I move on to make five general points about the papers in this special issue. First, I believe that, taken together, the three literature reviews accomplish three quite different tasks: (a) they document the nature of the impact of the typology on the research...

Purpose The present study applies Johnson’s (2008) typology of intimate partner violence (IPV) to female survivors in Karachi, Pakistan. Method Face-to-face structured interviews of a purposive sample of 80 ever-married survivors of IPV, followed by a cluster analysis of husbands’ controlling behaviors to identify types of IPV, followed by quantit...

In prior research, samples of incarcerated and reentering men and their partners report partner violence at roughly 10 times the frequency found in the general population. The relationship dynamics underlying these experiences remain poorly understood. Addressing this gap and expanding prior applications of Johnson’s typology in other populations—w...

This article is a personal social narrative of the development of my control-based typology of intimate partner violence (IPV). The influence of friends and colleagues in all aspects of this process was so central and so pervasive that it just did not make sense to me to make this a story only about myself. After I tell the social story of the deve...

Coercive control is central to distinguishing between Johnson's (2008) 2 main types of intimate partner violence: (a) coercive controlling violence and (b) situational couple violence. Approaches to assessing coercive control, however, have been inconsistent. Using data from 2 projects involving divorcing mothers (N = 190), the authors compared com...

In this article, we argue that past efforts to distinguish among types of intimate partner violence in general survey data have committed a critical error-using data on current spouses to develop operationalizations of intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. We use ex-spouse data from the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) t...

This chapter reviews empirical research that will inform the process of evaluating separating parents in the context of domestic violence (DV). It begins by introducing distinctions among types of DV, distinctions that are important for understanding the relevant research and for evaluating the implications of DV for custody decisions. To help esta...

This article presents a feminist perspective on domestic violence that is rooted in an explication of the differences among three major types of intimate partner violence (Johnson, 2008). Theory and research from this perspective is then reviewed to rebut recent attacks on feminist scholarship and policy regarding intimate partner violence.

This article makes four major points in response to Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rolling’s (2010) review of the intimate partner violence literature. First, the evidence is clear that there is more than one type of intimate partner violence. Second, the feminists are right. Gender is central to the analysis of intimate partner violence, and the coercive...

A growing body of empirical research has demonstrated that intimate partner violence is not a unitary phenomenon and that types of domestic violence can be differentiated with respect to partner dynamics, context, and consequences. Four patterns of violence are described: Coercive Controlling Violence, Violent Resistance, Situational Couple Violenc...

Reassesses thirty years of domestic violence research and demonstrates three forms of partner violence, distinctive in their origins, effects, and treatments Domestic violence, a serious and far-reaching social problem, has generated two key debates among researchers. The first debate is about gender and domestic violence. Some scholars argue that...

Research indicates that two major forms of partner violence exist, intimate terrorism (IT) and situational couple violence (SCV). The current study (N= 389) used a subgroup of women who responded to the Chicago Women’s Health Risk Study to examine whether type of violence experienced is differentially related to formal (e.g., police, medical agenci...

Four types of individual partner violence are identified based on the dyadic control context of the violence. In intimate terrorism, the individual is violent and controlling, the partner is not. In violent resistance, the individual is violent but not controlling; the partner is the violent and controlling one. In situational couple violence, alth...

This article is a brief reply to Dutton's rebuttal (Dutton, this issue) to the author's critique of Dutton's analysis of the role of gender in intimate partner violence.

A small body of mentoring literature exists, but how mentoring relates to feminist supervision of graduate students has not been explicitly addressed. Because mentoring typically socializes individuals into a preexisting structure that feminist scholars may be challenging, critiquing, and attempting to change, important considerations arise for fem...

Data from the National Violence Against Women Survey show that the two major forms of husband violence toward their wives (intimate terrorism and situational couple violence) have different effects on their victims. Victims of intimate terrorism are attacked more frequently and experience violence that is less likely to stop. They are more likely t...

In response to Dutton's (this issue) critique of feminist theories of domestic violence, the author of this article makes three points relevant to the debate about the gender asymmetry of intimate partner violence. First, there are three major types of intimate partner violence, only one of which (intimate terrorism) is the kind of violence that we...

The current study used a random sample of 563 low‐income women to test Johnson's (1995) theory that there are two major forms of male‐partner violence, situational couple violence and intimate terrorism, which are distinguished in terms of their embeddedness in a general pattern of control. The study examined the associations between type of violen...

Using data from a 1980 national sample of married men and women, the analysis examines the utility of the family life cycle concept, employing as dependent variables constructs from Johnson’s conceptualization of commitment. They argue, in disagreement with two classic critiques of the family life cycle concept, that the predictive power of family...

This paper is an analytic test of Johnson's commitment framework. Johnson's conceptualization of commitment is grounded in the assumption that people experience three different types of commitment (personal, moral, and structural), and that these types of commitment have different causes and consequences. Using data from a 1980 national random samp...

This review of the family literature on domestic violence suggests that two broad themes of the 1990s provide the most promising directions for the future. The first is the importance of distinctions among types or contexts of violence. Some distinctions are central to the theoretical and practical understanding of the nature of partner violence, o...

This study assesses the empirical viability of Johnson's (1991) commitment framework. The core principle is that commitment, rather than a unitary phenomenon, involves three distinct experiences: wanting to stay married, feeling morally obligated to stay married, and feeling constrained to stay married. Using data from a sample of married couples,...

Provides a general exposition on competing theoretical and conceptual models of interpersonal commitment, with special emphasis on the commitment framework the author has developed over the past 30 yrs. This model contains 3 basic types of commitment: personal, moral, and structural. Central to this chapter is the argument that commitment is best r...

The process of grading pupil performance in American schools has received considerable attention over the years. Most of the previous studies have focused on the observed associations between grades and certain pupil characteristics such as family background, sex, abilities, attitudes and behaviors. Far less attention has been given to the influenc...

According to a 1989 United Nations report,2 violence against women in the home is a serious problem in all countries of the world. In the United States active concern with this pervasive threat to the well-being of women has produced considerable social change since 1970, as well as a large body of social science research documenting the nature of...

This article argues that there are two distinct forms of couple violence taking place within families in the United States and other Western countries. A review of evidence from large-sample survey research and from qualitative and quantitative data gathered from women's shelters suggests that some families suffer from occasional outbursts of viole...

Developed a typology of marital structure by means of a cluster analysis of data regarding husbands' and wives' day-to-day life together in work and leisure. Ss were 100 couples who had been married approximately 2 yrs. J. Bernard's (1964) discussion of the central features of marriage provided the rationale for the inclusion of the following 5 var...

This study analyzes the determinants of wives' perceptions of the fairness of the division of household labor. In agreement with Ferree (1990), we argue that both ideological and material factors must be included in any analysis of housework. Using data from the 1988 National Survey of Families and Households, the analyses indicate that husbands' c...

The INDSCAL technique (Carroll & Chang, 1970) offers the possibility of assessing the relative importance of various dimensions of social judgment for individual actors. It is used here to demonstrate the psychological multidimensionality of an ostensibly unidimensional Guttman scale, Reiss' scale of premarital sexual permissiveness. The results su...

One hundred eighty subjects participated in a factorial field experiment designed to study the effects of body orientation, eye contact, and sex upon helping behavior in a situation where a male victim fell. An eye-contact x x body-orientation interaction and a sex x body-orientation interaction were found. Eye contact raised the rate of help; and...

A conceptual structure for commitment is presented, specifying and clarifying the various meanings of the term as it has been used by sociologists and social psychologists. The possible importance of the concept for social psychology is illustrated by the interpretation of a number of social psychological experiments in terms of commitment processe...