The Effect of Gender on Negative Emotional Experiences Accompanying Muslims’ and Jews’ Use of Verbal Aggression in Heterosexual Intimate-Partner Relationships

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relationship between gender, religion, and the negative emotional experiences that accompany the use of unidirectional and mutual verbal aggression in conflicts between spouses. The study was based on a community sample of 163 couples (326 participants). The findings show that the negative emotional experience in mutually aggressive interactions is more intense than that observed in unidirectional aggressive interactions. The negative emotional experience that accompanies the use of verbal aggression is more intense among women than among men. The findings also show that the more one partner uses verbal aggression, the more the other partner will do so as well. In the general Israeli population, the use of verbal aggression between partners is more prevalent among Jewish couples than among Muslim couples; this difference points to an effect of the sociocultural context. Theoretical and empirical implications of the theoretical framework and the findings are discussed, including the role of verbal aggression in the escalation of partner conflicts.

KEYWORDS:

• Negative emotional experience
• verbal aggression
• conflict escalation
• unidirectional aggression
• mutual aggression
• gender
• religion