Intimate partner batterersIrrational beliefs, distorted thoughts and concealment

Resumo

Irrational beliefs and distorted thoughts among batterers are highly prevalent and associated with the initiation and maintenance of intimate partner violence. However, when assessing this construct in such populations, it is necessary to suspect an attempt to distort the responses, bearing in mind that they may be more accessible to those assessed when identifying socially desirable responses. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of intervention on irrational beliefs and distorted thoughts of intimate partner batterers and controlling the strategies of distortion of the responses towards concealment, in a sample of 141 convicted male batterers who complete a community intervention in the Galician programme for gender aggressors. In order to ascertain the prevalence of these beliefs, the Questionnaire of irrational beliefs and distorted thoughts on the use of violence, gender roles and partner relationships (Arce & Fariña, 2005) was applied to participants in pre and post intervention conditions, as well as a protocol for monitoring the validity of responses The results show a large and statistically significant effect of intervention on the reduction of irrational beliefs on the use of violence, gender role and emotional dependence. However, by incorporating as covariate the scores obtained in the L Scale of the MMPI-2, the multivariate results lose significance and, at the univariate level they reflect that the reported changes in beliefs about gender roles and use of violence are not statistically significant, so that the intentional distortion of their responses is observed, and the lack of validity of the results when concealment is not taken into account.