Definition
Abusers are those individuals who use strategies of intimidation, threat, isolation, and physical and sexual aggression against a victim. There are different forms of abuse, which can be broadly categorized into physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. When the victims are women, the abuser is often someone close to the victim, especially male partners and male ex-partners.
Introduction
Aggression in the context of a relationship, also called intimate partner violence (IPV), has been documented across several cultures (see Archer 2006), having detrimental impacts on the victims’ health, such as physical injuries, poorer cognitive functioning, and psychological problems (Lawrence et al. 2012) and on the relationship, predicting relationship dissatisfaction (Hammett et al. 2017). While Archer (2000) found in a meta-analysis that among young American couples, women are slightly more likely to use physical...
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Nascimento, B.D. (2021). Abusers: Husbands, Boyfriends, and Former Sexual Partners. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1787
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