Knowledge Bank

According to the theory of ecosystem and egosystem social motivation, individuals who hold nonzero-sum beliefs maintain that relationships function in win-win ways. When conflicts emerge, they believe it is possible to find a solution beneficial to both partners. This study investigates whether nonzero-sum beliefs can decrease aggressive responses to relationship conflict, thus decreasing intimate partner violence (IPV). Furthermore, IPV typologies were distinguished using levels of coercive control. Undergraduate student participants (N = 135) were either primed with a passage advocating for nonzero-sum beliefs or a control passage on intelligence. Participants were led to believe that the passage was irrelevant to the study using a deception protocol. Participants then listened to a conflict-provoking scenario using the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) procedure and reported their reactions to the situation. Participants also completed a lexical decision task, word completion task, the Revised Conflicts Tactics Scale, an explicit scenario response measure, and a coercive control measure. Results show that when explicitly asked how they would respond, participants receiving the nonzero-sum passage reported significantly less aggressive scenario responses compared to the control group. Similarly, participants in the control condition reported more aggression in the free response, ATSS measure, however these differences were not significant between conditions. No significant differences between conditions were found on the word completion task or lexical decision task. Coercive control significantly moderated the effect of condition on ATSS response aggression, such that when coercive control was low condition affected aggression, while when coercive control was high condition had no effect. Coercive control did not moderate the effect of condition on explicit aggression responses. The data from the explicit scenario response measure shows promising results, however further research on the effects of nonzero-sum beliefs on intimate partner violence is warranted. Nonzero-sum beliefs could be a key addition to preventing IPV perpetration.