A Unique Research Project on Domestic Violence

When Vicky returned to Seattle, she had no job, no place to live, no support from her family, and no career. She was twenty-seven, and as she walked down the street, men turned to look at her. She was blond, with high cheekbones, and dazzling blue eyes.

She had no interest in meeting a man, but George had other ideas. He was sitting in a bar with his drinking buddies when Vicky walked in. They all stared at her, smirking, and each one started joking about making this conquest, but it was George who made the bizarre bet. He bet them $100 that he could get her to marry him within six months. Sealing the bet with a handshake, George walked up to her and offered to buy her a drink.

"He was one hundred percent charming," Vicky later recalled. I fell in love with him almost instantly, and I thought he was falling in love with me. He was perfect. He was wonderful, smart, an undiscovered genius. He told me all about how great his family was, what a wonderful sailor he was, and all of his plans to become an admiral. He fed me all this bullshit about his family values which I bought hook, line, and sinker."

Somehow, says Vicky, even in this first conversation, George was able to ferret out what was most important to her. "He somehow knew that the 'family' thing would hook me. I had spent twelve years rebelling against my family. But deep down inside, a family is what I wanted. That was my dream. And somehow, George knew it.

"Still," said Vicky, I had no intention of getting married again. I was trying to figure out my life. Where was I going to go to school? Was I going to be an artist? But he really made me feel like he loved me." Vicky wasn't thinking about having children either, but suddenly she was pregnant. George saw to that. After all, he wanted to win his bet. "As soon as I got pregnant," she says, "he proposed. He knew deep down I wanted a family.

"At the time," said Vicky, "the whole thing seemed very romantic: me pregnant and him begging me to marry him. And, almost six months from the day we met, we got married. He was so charming, and so romantic that I thought it was just meant to be."

One of George's friends had told Vicky that George was dangerous, and advised her not to marry him. He told her that she was going to "burn with this guy." They were frightened of him, but Vicky was not. The first sign of real trouble came soon after their daughter Christi was born. Vicky was comforting the baby, but the baby wouldn't stop crying. Suddenly, George yelled at Vicky for not being able to "shut the baby up" and threw a toy at her. Vicky felt a chill run through her. She became very quiet.

A few days after this incident, George began what was to become a familiar refrain. He started quietly talking about his plans to kill three former buddies from his teenage days. He said they were slime and therefore deserved to die. Boasting that there were other people he had already killed, he insisted that his vengeance against the former buddies was not a big deal. George was setting the scene for Vicky to view him as dangerous. What was to become his typical use of violence as a way of intimidating and controlling her had begun.

Martha and Don

This had been a hard day for Don. There were rumors of layoffs, and he could see the handwriting on the wall. His immediate supervisor had been on his case for sleeping late, and Don sensed that he would soon become a liability to this man's inevitable rise to the top. His supervisor had called him in and then told him not to worry, but he had that stupid grin on his face when he said it. Don was getting sick and tired of doing his work well and never getting the recognition he deserved. He was sure he was about to get caught in some kind of vise he had no control over. It had definitely been a miserable day.

Now Don was test-driving the car he had asked his wife, Martha, to pick up from the garage. As he listened to the motor, he knew instantly that he had again been hoodwinked by the garage. They had charged for the tune-up and the work they had done but that damn rattle was still there going up hills, even though he had told them to look at it. As he drove back home his smoldering fury increased. He was so mad when he pulled into the driveway of his home that he almost smashed into his wife's car. She was calmly cooking dinner when he came into the house in a frenzy. "What is it with you?" he said. "Are you really that stupid?" Don railed. "Couldn't you just tell that the damn car wasn't running right, that you'd been had by those damn mechanics?"

"Is something wrong with the car?" said Martha calmly. "It sounded fine to me."

Don continued railing against the garage mechanics and against Martha for not standing up to them. Martha started defending herself, telling Don that even though she knew nothing about cars, she resented being called stupid. He was starting to see red. Don warned her to shut up. Then Martha said that if Don was such a big man why didn't he stand up to the mechanics the last time he thought they gypped him? Don punched her hard in the face for siding with the enemy that way. It was not the first punch of their marriage by a long shot. He kept calling her stupid and hitting her and telling her that all he was asking for was a little empathy about his problems. When Don saw the blood on Martha's face, he knew he had lost it, but he told himself that she deserved it. Only a small part of him, dimly-like a faint whisper in the corner of his brain-wanted to cry like a baby and beg forgiveness. He drove her to the emergency room. Later they had dinner in silence.

By the next day, he regained his old charm and had managed to squelch that dim light of remorse.

Studying Violent Marriages

Both of these couples were participants in a unique study of violent marriages that we have been conducting in Seattle for the past eight years. The purpose of our study was to apply the methods of science to a problem which had rarely been studied by scientists: domestic violence. For over two decades, each of the authors of this book had made his reputation as a scientist studying marriage, and as creators of therapy techniques for helping couples improve their relationships. Thus, we were well aware of domestic violence, as anyone who studies couples must be. But we had never, until eight years ago, taken the detour which has captivated us ever since.

Anyone who decides to inform themselves about domestic violence will have no trouble finding articles and books that address the topic. There are self-help books lining the bookshelves, providing advice for battered women. There are books for academics and professionals written by historians, sociologists, psychologists, and lawyers. But there are few facts, and very little science. The science that has been published is informative. It provides facts about the frequency, severity, and scope of domestic violence. It suggests a great many ways in which Western culture has condoned and even encouraged the battering of women by their husbands, and the more subtle ways in which it still does.

Up until twenty years ago, little was written about domestic violence. It was not identified as a major societal problem, and most battered women didn't know that there was anything out of the ordinary in their marriages. However, with the onset of the women's movement, and the growth of feminism in the 1970s, writers began to draw attention to violence against women, including and especially violence perpetrated by husbands against wives. Psychologist Lenore Walker wrote two extremely influential books that defined the problem, and analyzed it with a combination of scientific procedures and clinical speculation. Sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles conducted two national surveys, which were shocking in their implication-there was so much family violence that many began to wonder whether or not it was the norm rather than the exception.

Since then, domestic violence has captured the attention of some social and behavioral scientists, and slowly a growing body of knowledge has accumulated. At the same time, public consciousness about domestic violence has been raised by the publicity surrounding the 0. J. Simpson double murder trials. In fact, the one clear benefit resulting from the media coverage surrounding these cases has been the discussion of domestic violence that has taken place in the media: through television talk shows, coverage in newspapers and magazines, radio, and commentaries from experts in the field.

In our study we were determined to do something that no one had ever done before: directly observe the arguments of severely violent couples, instead of relying on reports of the arguments. We were also determined to assess, as directly as possible, the emotional experiences of batterers and battered women during arguments. Finally, we wanted to find out what factors determined the demise of abusive relationships, and how the course of domestic violence changed over time.

Why were these scientific methods necessary? First, questionnaires and related reports provided by batterers are always suspect, unless they are verified by observers who can be considered objective. There is a venerable body of research within psychology showing how susceptible participants' reports are to bias and distortion. This is especially true with regard to events from the past. Unless this information is independently confirmed by another more objective measurement of the same phenomena being reported, the answers given by batterers are particularly suspect. People are simply not reliable observers of their own or their intimate partners' behavior. By directly observing arguments rather than simply asking people to report on them, we can verify the accuracy of their perceptions, and judge how trustworthy their accounts of violent altercations are. Although we knew we would not directly observe violent altercations, we could observe nonviolent arguments between batterers and battered women. By determining the accuracy of their accounts of nonviolent arguments, we felt we could draw inferences about how trustworthy their accounts of violent arguments are.

Second, the role of emotions, especially hostility and fear, in domestic violence has been emphasized in the literature, but, again, we have been forced to rely on reports by batterers and their victims of their emotional experience, typically some time after the episode in question. All of the problems we just discussed are present when we rely on participants to accurately report their emotional experience. Such reports are subjective, often biased, and easily distorted. In contrast, polygraphs and other psychophysiological recording instruments are objective: they don't lie, distort, or report in a biased manner. Because of the technology available for recording heart rate, movement, and other physiological activity, we are able to infer emotional arousal without having to rely on the subjective reports of batterers and battered women. We conducted the first objective measurements of emotional arousal during arguments among batterers and battered women by using sophisticated polygraphs and other psychophysiological recording devices to measure the emotional level of both batterers and battered women during arguments.

Third, even though writers and experts have speculated on how violent marriages change over time, few have directly observed those changes as they occur. People are generally not good at reporting if, why, or how they have changed-either while change is occurring or in retrospect. In order to truly determine what happens to the relationships of batterers and battered women as time goes on, the social scientist has to be there watching them, listening to them, and collecting information as it is occurring. In our study, unbiased observers followed batterers and their partners over time, and using objective as well as subjective measures, measured changes as they were occurring. This way, we can now report on the factors that lead to women getting out of abusive relationships, or those that account for changes in violence over time-either changes for the better or changes for the worse.