Personality characteristics of a sample of violent adolescents against their partners

BACKGROUND: The study of intimate partner violence has historically focused on violence perpetrated on females by males, but recent research suggests that, at least in teenage couples, the difference between genders is decreasing or even reversing. The objective of this study is to analyze the personality characteristics of adolescents who are violent with their partners. The sample consisted of 430 subjects (229 girls and 201 boys), between 14 and 19 years (M = 16.18, SD = 1.81), middle or high school students, which completed the Personality Assessment Inventory-Adolescents and the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory. RESULTS: The results show that girls have higher personality scores on the scales that show problems of internal behavior (depression and anxiety), while boys show higher scores on the scales of external behavior problems (antisocial behavior and drug use). Through a regression analysis, the results show predictive weights in the aggression traits (β = .331, p < .001), antisocial characteristics (β = .202, p < .001), and mania (β = .185, p < .05), as the scores on the scale of violence perpetrated increase in girls. For boys, personality variables do not seem to have such a decisive weight to explain the violence committed, since only heat and alcohol problems represent 5.4% of the variance found. These differences between boys and girls should be analyzed in future studies and, if the findings are maintained, taken into account when developing programs to prevent gender-based violence in adolescents. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study show how the personality characteristics have a differential weight in the explanation of the teen dating aggression according to the gender of the aggressors, with a greater relevance in the prediction of the aggressive behaviors committed by the girls.