Abstract
Purpose
In this pre-registered research, we tested how attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were related to psychological intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration. Specifically, we examined the mediating roles of self-compassion and compassionate goals in these associations.
Method
Available data were collected online from 513 participants (241 men, 272 women) who were currently in dating relationships in Japan. These participants completed a measure of general romantic attachment styles and, then, brought their current dating partners to mind. Subsequently, they completed measures of compassionate goals, self-compassion, and psychological IPV perpetration and victimization in their current dating relationships.
Results
We tested the saturated mediation model in which we treated attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance as predictors, self-compassion and compassionate goals as parallel mediators, and psychological IPV perpetration as an outcome variable. Multiple mediation analyses indicated that low self-compassion mediated the positive associations between attachment anxiety and psychological IPV perpetration, point estimate = 0.006, 95% CI [0.003, 0.010], and between attachment avoidance and psychological IPV perpetration, point estimate = 0.004, 95% CI [0.002, 0.008]. Furthermore, low compassionate goals mediated the positive association between attachment avoidance and psychological IPV perpetration, point estimate = 0.018, 95% CI [0.010, 0.026]. These indirect effects remained significant even when the influence of psychological IPV victimization and covariates, such as participants’ sex and relationship characteristics, were considered in the model.
Conclusion
Our findings imply that insecure attachment styles may orient people to be less compassionate toward themselves and their relationship partners and, thus, engage in psychological IPV perpetration.
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Our work was funded by JSPS KAKENHI grant (JP18H01080). This research has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of the affiliated university of the authors. All procedures performed in this research involving human participants were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the research. This research is pre-registered at Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/u4d9m). The dataset for this study is available at Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/ftq72/).
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Miyagawa, Y., Kanemasa, Y. Insecure Attachment and Psychological Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration: Low Self-compassion and Compassionate Goals as Mediators. J Fam Viol 38, 1443–1455 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00436-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00436-z