The current study examined male-to-female partner violence on individual, interpersonal, and contextual/cultural levels. Murray Bowen's theory of differentiation was used as the theoretical framework for understanding the individual variable of self control of emotional reactivity and the interpersonal variable of partner fusion. Feminist theory was used as the theoretical framework for understanding the contextual or cultural variable of marital egalitarianism or gender equality in the relationship. Participants in this study included 133 men from various men's groups (men's anger management groups, a college athletic team, a civic group, church groups, a court services group, and men from counseling centers). Self control of emotional reactivity was measured by the Self Control (Sc) subscale of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). Partner fusion was measured by the Spousal Fusion (SPFUS) subscale of the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire (P AFS-Q). Marital Egalitarianism was measured by the Marital Roles subscale of the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES). Partner violence was measured by using four subscales (physical assault scale, physical assault prevalence, physical injury scale, and physical assault prevalence) of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2). The data analysis consisted of descriptive analysis, correlational analysis, t-tests, and a series of multiple regressions.

The findings of the current study support the original hypothesis in which there was a significant relationship between self-control, partner fusion, marital egalitarianism and the use of violent conflict tactics. The study further revealed a significant predictive relationship between partner fusion and three of the four violence measures as well as a significant predictive relationship between self-control and one of four violence measures and marital egalitarianism and one of four violence measures. Since the anger management groups were chosen specifically because of their past violent behavior, analyses were conducted in which the anger management groups ( Anger group) were compared to all other participants (Other group). T-tests revealed significantly higher partner fusion scores for the Anger group compared to the Other group. When the two groups were compared for interaction effects between the independent variables and group membership using a series of multiple regression analyses, marital egalitarianism emerged as a significant predictor of violence for the Anger group, but not for the Other group, when it was coupled with partner fusion. In addition, self control was found to be a significant predictor for the Other group, but not the Anger group with one of the violence measures. Self control did not, however, have a significant interaction effect.