Women's Experience of Giving and Receiving Emotional Abuse

Abstract

Relationships among attachment styles and the infliction and receipt of emotional abuse among college students in romantic relationships were examined. Both self-report and interview measures were collected. The self-reports were administered to a sample of 427 college students, 61 (42 women and 19 men) of whom were interviewed. For women (but not for men), the interview and self-report measures of emotional abuse converged, with r's ranging from .39 to .74. The predicted patterns of relationship between attachment styles and abuse held most strongly when interview measures of each were examined. Women high in attachment security were less likely to both inflict and receive emotional abuse. Those high in preoccupied (anxious) attachment were likely to both inflict and receive abuse. A similar but nonsignificant trend held for fearful women. A partial correlational analysis was conducted that refined and extended these findings.