Social learning theory and partner violence: a research note

Despite being a well-established area of inquiry, the study of intimate partner violence and aggression is limited by a lack of theoretical development. In this study we show how the key theoretical elements of two of the more prominent explanations for partner violence, intergenerational transmission theory and male peer support theory, are easily subsumed by Akers' social learning theory. We then test the explanatory power and scope of social learning theory against self-report data on the prevalence of physical aggression in marital and dating relationships among large sample of university students. The results show that our models account for a modest amount of the variation in intimate partner violence with several indicators of two of the four social learning theory constructs (differential association and differential reinforcement) attaining statistical significance; the effects of both imitation and definitions fail to attain significance.