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Violence and Victims, Volume 22, Number 2, 2007 Borderline and Antisocial Personality Scores as Mediators Between Attachment and Intimate Partner Violence Anne Marie Mauricio, PhD Jenn-Yun Tein, PhD Arizona Prevention Research Center Arizona State University Frederick G. Lopez, PhD University of Houston, TX Court-mandated male batterers (n = 192) attending an intervention program completed measures examining adult attachment orientations (anxious and avoidant), personality disorders (borderline and antisocial), type of violence (psychological and physical), and social desirability. Structural equation modeling was used to determine whether there were significant relationships between anxious attachment and physical and psychological violence that are mediated by either borderline or antisocial personality disorders. Social desirability was included in both models as a covariate. Results indicated that personality disorders fully mediated the relationship between avoidant attachment and physical as well as psychological violence. Personality disorders only partially mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and psychological violence. Implications for intervention are discussed. Keywords: etiology; batterer; intervention; borderline personality disorder; antisocial personality disorder T he recognition of intimate partner violence (IPV) as a serious and pervasive problem has prompted research exploring factors contributing to such violence. The urgency to attend to IPV is further highlighted by findings that it permeates every race, religion, social class, and educational level (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995; National Institute of Justice, 1998, 2000; Straus & Gelles, 1986). Research exploring the origins of IPV has identified a wide range of predictors that account for IPV against women (Schumacher, Feldbau-Kohn, Smith Slep, & Heyman, 2001; Schumacher, Smith Slep, & Heyman, 2001). Adult attachment characteristics and per- sonality disorders are two predictors of IPV that have received increasing attention in recent years. © 2007 Springer Publishing Company 139 140 Mauricio et al. IPV AND ADULT ATTACHMENT Attachment theory provides a rich conceptual framework for understanding IPV. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1982) posits that, for the purpose of safety and survival, humans are innately driven to seek attachments or close enduring emo- tional bonds with others. Moreover, through attachment processes, individuals develop an internalized set of beliefs about self and other, known as "internal working models" (Bowlby, 1973, 1988). The internal working model of self influences one's perceptions about his or her self-worth, competence, and lovability, whereas the working model of other is responsible for expectations about the availability and trustworthiness of others. When caregivers are available and consistently responsive during childhood, secure attachments and corresponding positive internal working models of self and other develop and promote healthy developmental trajectories and relationship patterns (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). By contrast, disruptions in the parent-child bond are the precursors to insecure attachment and corresponding negative models of self and/or others, thus promoting maladaptive relationship patterns that can continue to regulate relationship behavior into adulthood. Specifically, attachment theory maintains that insecurely attached individuals, compared with securely attached individuals, dem- onstrate more anxiety, avoidance, or both characteristics in their intimate relationships (Fraley & Waller, 1998). Research supports the conceptualization of attachment as a two-dimensional structure (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998; Brennan & Shaver, 1995; Lopez & Brennan, 2000). The first dimension (i.e., attachment avoidance) is charac- terized by a pervasive discomfort with intimate closeness and a strong orientation toward self-reliant and counterdependent relationship behavior. The second dimension (i.e., attachment anxiety) is represented by low self-esteem, pervasive fears of partner rejection and abandonment, and dependent relationship behavior. Whereas the avoidant dimension is closely related with a negative model of others, a negative model of self is associated with anxious attachment. Attachment theory has been proposed as a conceptual framework for understand- ing interpersonal dynamics in adult relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), including relationship violence (Bowlby, 1984; Dutton, 1995; Fonagy, 1999; Mayseless, 1991). For example, given their low self-esteem and fears of rejection, adults with an anxious attachment orientation who perceive their intimate partner as unavailable may respond to this distress by engaging in overt expressions of anger and manipulation targeted toward keeping their partner engaged in the relationship. On the other hand, given their gener- ally hostile interpersonal orientation and negative models of others, avoidantly attached adults may be more distressed by fears of engulfment and partner assertion and more disposed to use violence and other abusive strategies to control and intimidate their part- ners (Mayseless, 1991). Research exploring associations between adult insecure attach- ment and male-perpetrated IPV against women has provided support for the hypothesis that insecurely attached men are at risk for committing IPV (Tweed & Dutton, 1998) and that attachment dynamics corresponding with insecure attachment (e.g., fear of aban- donment) may explain IPV (Dutton & Browning, 1988; Dutton, Saunders, Starzomski, & Bartholomew, 1994; Dutton, Starzomski, & Ryan, 1996; Woike, Osier, & Candela, 1996). Personality, Attachment, and Violence 141 IPV AND PERSONALITY DISORDERS As noted earlier, personality disorders have also recently gained prominence in under- standing the etiology of IPV. Specifically, research has demonstrated that personality disorders related to the need to control others (e.g., narcissistic and antisocial) and related to self-concept and identity (e.g., borderline) are particularly prominent among batterers (Hamberger & Hastings, 1988). Additionally, research on violent husbands (Holtzworth- Munroe, Bates, Smutzler, & Sandin, 1997) suggests that violent husbands compared with nonviolent men are more likely to evidence borderline and antisocial personality disor- ders. For example, Hastings and Hamberger (1988) found that batterers demonstrated more borderline symptomatology than nonbatterers, and Dutton et al. (1996) found that descriptions of batterer personalities and behaviors fit the clinical classifications of bor- derline personality disorder. Murphy, Meyer, and O'Leary (1993) found that violent men, as compared to nonviolent men, consistently demonstrated higher scores on a measure of antisocial personality disorder after controlling for social desirability. Studies demonstrating the prevalence of personality dynamics descriptive of bor- derline and antisocial personality disorders among batterers provide additional support for the hypothesis that the presence of a personality disorder may be a risk marker for committing IPV. For example, a hallmark of borderline personality disorder is fear of abandonment (Gunderson, 1984; Sack, Sperling, Fagen, & Foelsch, 1996), and Dutton and Browning (1988) found that, compared with nonabusers, physical abusers reported the most anger to scenarios depicting abandonment of a male by his female partner. Additionally, research suggests a positive relationship between excessive dependency needs, which are also a defining feature of the borderline personality (Gunderson, 1984; Sack et al., 1996) and relationship violence (Murphy et al., 1993). Deficiencies in empa- thy as well as a lack of remorse are often associated with antisocial behaviors (American Psychiatric Associafion, 1994), such as violence. Supporting this association, Mehrabian (1997) found that measures of aggression and violence were negatively correlated with measures of emotional empathy, and Bovasso, Alterman, Cacciola, and Rutherford (2002) found that deficient empathy predicted violent crime. Research with samples of men perpetrating IPV suggests that these men exhibit antisocial characteristics, such as a tendency to externalize responsibility for behavior (Floumy & Wilson, 1991; Hale, Zimostrad, Duckworth, & Nicholas, 1988). ATTACHMENT THEORY: A CONCEPTUAL ERAMEWORK EOR UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY DISORDER ORIGINS In addifion to providing a rich conceptual framework for understanding IPV, attachment theory also provides a theoretical framework for understanding personality disorder ori- gins, especially borderline and antisocial personality disorders. Bowlby (1988) argued that the quality of one's early attachments determine internal representations of self and other. In tum, these mental representations influence interpersonal funcfioning and impact later psychological health. Secure attachments early in life contribute to healthy psychological development, whereas insecure attachments make one vulnerable to psychopathology. Specifically, anxious attachment produces a vulnerability to disorders that exaggerate negative affect and distress in an effort to get the attention of an attachment figure. Fear of 142 Mauricio et al. abandonment, clinging behaviors, and an uncertainty as to whether the attachment figure will respond accompany overwhelming negative affects. In contrast, avoidant attachment makes one prone to behaviors that minimize distress and vulnerable to disorders that deny the presence of negative affect. Because avoidantly attached individuals expect to be rebuffed, they become compulsively self-reliant and deny intimacy needs. Thus, the psychopathology of anxious attachment is more likely to reflect borderline traits, whereas the psychopathology of avoidant attachment is more likely to reflect antisocial personality traits. Others have followed Bowlby in positing the etiological role of attachment and disturbed working models of self and other in theoretical conceptualizations of personality disorders (Fonagy, 2003; Sable, 1997). Consistent with theoretical suppositions, many researchers have underscored the importance of attachment in understanding personality disorders (Brennan & Shaver, 1998; Livesley, Schroeder, & Jackson, 1990; Sheldon & West, 1990), providing evidence of relationships between anxious attachment and borderline personal- ity disorder (Fonagy et al., 1996; Patrick, Hobson, Castle, Howard, & Maughan, 1994; Rosenstein & Horowitz, 1996; West, Keller, Links, & Patrick, 1993) as well as between avoidant attachment and antisocial personality disorder (Gacano & Meloy, 1991, 1992; Gacano, Meloy, & Berg, 1992). PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY Relationships between anxious attachment and borderline personality disorder as well as relationships between avoidant attachment and antisocial personality disorder raise questions about whether these adult attachment orientations and personality disorders operate independently in predicting IPV or whether the presence or absence of personal- ity disorders functionally mediates the relationship between insecure adult attachment and IPV. While previous research has demonstrated the contributions of adult attachment orientations and personality disorders in generally predicting IPV as well as relationships between adult attachment and personality disorders, no study has tested whether personal- ity disorders mediate the effects of adult attachment on violence. Answering this question has important implications for batterer intervention, as models of intervention are related to current understandings of risk factors for committing IPV. It also remains unclear whether any observed interrelationships among adult attachment orientations, personality disorders, and IPV are a function of the form of IPV that is being assessed. A review docu- menting different risk markers for psychological and physical violence (see Schumacher, Feldbau-Kohn, et al., 2001; Schumacher, Smith Slep, et al., 2001) supports the inclusion of psychological and physical violence as distinct outcomes in IPV research. Schumacher et al.'s reviews identified insecure attachment and personality disorders as risk markers for both psychological and physical violence. It is thus possible that direct and mediational effects of adult attachment and personality disorders on physical and psychological abuse differ depending on the form of IPV that is being predicted. The current study will address these questions by posing and testing mediational models that, respectively, predict scores on indicators of psychological abuse and physical violence. The proposed effort to consider how attachment and personality disorders function together to explain IPV may also contribute to the discussion on batterer typologies. A significant contribution to the field of IPV has been the advancement of batterer typology research premised on the assumption that batterers are a heterogeneous group that may Personality, Attachment, and Violence 143 respond differentially to treatment (Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 2005). In general, typology research suggests that there are subgroups of batterers that are behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively diverse. Moreover, typology research has indicated that anxious and avoid- ant adult attachment orientations as well as borderline and antisocial personality disorders each play central roles in distinguishing batterer subgroups. Specifically, one of the pro- posed subgroups is avoidantly attached with antisocial personality disorder characteristics, and a second proposed subgroup is anxiously attached with borderline personality disorder characteristics (Hamberger, Lohr, Bonge, & Tolin, 1996; Holtzworth-Munore, Meehan, Herron, Rehman, & Stuart, 2000; Tweed & Dutton, 1998; Waltz, Babcock, Jacobson, & Gottman, 2000). The conceptualization outlined in this article, which juxtaposes anxious attachment and borderline personality disorder as well as avoidant attachment and antiso- cial personality disorder, is consistent with the typology literature. However, understand- ing mediational processes between attachment and personality dysfunction will answer questions regarding the dynamic by which attachment and personality may operate to influence IPV for a particular subgroup of batterers. Hypotheses Based on research demonstrating associations between insecure attachment and personality disorders, we hypothesized that relationships between adult attachment orientations and IPV would be mediated by personality disorders. More specifically, we hypothesized that borderline personality disorder would mediate the relationship between anxious attachment and IPV, whereas antisocial personality disorder would mediate the relationship between avoidant attachment and violence. In this study, IPV was operationalized by measures of psychological and physical violence against intimate female partners. METHOD Participants Participants were 192 heterosexual men with at least an eighth-grade reading level that were court mandated to attend a community batterer intervention program. Three percent of the sample had a graduate degree, 6% had a college degree, 27% had at least 1 year of college, 40% had a high school diploma or graduate equivalent, 17% had at least 1 year of high school, and 6% had only a junior high school education. Thirty-six percent ofthe sample reported that they were married, 22% were single and not living with a girlfriend, 22% were single and living with a girlfriend, 11% were divorced, and 9% were separated. The age of participants ranged from 17 to 56 years old, with a mean of 33 (SD = 8.83). The racial ethnic breakdown of the sample was 67% Caucasian, 16% African American, 8% Hispanic, 3% Native American, 1% Asian, and 5% self-identified as "other." Procedures Study participants were invited to participate in this study by the first author during one of the participants' court-mandated weekly group sessions. These men were informed that participation in this study was voluntary and anonymous. If they declined to participate, they would complete an alternate activity with the group facilitator. Participants were also informed that they would receive $15 for their participation. All solicited men agreed to 144 Mauricio et al. participate. Participants then completed informed consent forms and a packet of self-report questionnaires. The order in which the questionnaires were administered was varied from participant to participant. Participation time was approximately 45 minutes. Measures Demographic and Participant Background Questionnaire. This questionnaire was developed to gather information regarding the participants' ethnicity, age, educational level, and relationship status for the purpose of describing the sample. Reading Level. The Basic Reading Inventory: Graded Passage-Form B (BRI; Johns, 1997) was individually administered to participants as an informal reading test to ensure that respondents had an eighth-grade reading level. Published initially in 1978, the BRI has been used extensively by various types of professionals in education and psychology. Form B is a silent reading test, where participants read and subsequently respond in writing to 10 corresponding comprehension questions (i.e., "What is this passage about?"). If the participant responds inaccurately to more than three questions, his comprehension of the material is below the eighth-grade level. At least an eighth-grade reading level was needed to understand the self-report inventories administered. All participants demonstrated an eighth-grade reading level. Antisocial and Borderline Personality Disorder Characteristics. Antisocial and bor- derline personality disorder characteristics were assessed using the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-Revised (PDQ-R; Hyler et al., 1988), a self-report measure that screens for personality disorders described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychological Association, 1987). Scores can be computed as con- tinuous or categorical variables. Categorical scores can be compared with cutoff scores and used to determine whether a person meets criteria for a specific personality disorder. Participants in this study completed only borderline and antisocial subscales. Because the PDQ-R was used in this study to assess dimensions of antisocial and borderline person- ality disorders rather than to diagnose participants, continuous scores were used for the purpose of this study. The borderline subscale has 12 items, and the antisocial subscale has 11 items. "Some people consider me a drifter" and "lying comes easily to me and I often do it" are representative of items on the PDQ-R antisocial subscale. "I feel empty or bored much of the time" and "my feelings toward another person can often change drastically" are representative of items on the PDQ-R borderline subscale. The PDQ-R is valid for use with both clinical (Hyler, Skodol, Oldham, Kellman, & Doidge, 1992; Hyler et al., 1990) and nonclinical samples (Johnson & Bomstein, 1992; Wierzbicki & Gorman, 1995). Correlations between borderline and antisocial subscales ofthe Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II)—a well-validated measure of personality disorders—and the PDQ-R borderline subscales and antisocial subscales have been as high as .57 and .37, respectively, suggesting construct validity of the PDQ-R borderline and antisocial sub- scales (Wierzbicki & Gorman, 1995). In the present study, Cronbach alpha coefficients of .66 and .62 were obtained for scores on the borderline and antisocial subscales, respec- tively. However, dropping the item "I drive pretty well even if I have been drinking" from the antisocial subscale increased this subscale's score reliability to .64. As such, this item was not included in the antisocial subscale used for analyses in this study. Fossati et al. (1998) found somewhat comparable internal consistency coefficients, with an alpha equal to .70 for the borderline scale and .63 for the antisocial scale. Personality, Attachment, and Violence - 145 Anxious and Avoidant Adult Attachment Orientations. Adult attachment orientations were assessed using the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) short form. The ECR is a 36-item measure of adult romantic attachment orientation comprised of two subscales: orientation toward anxious adult attachment and orientation toward avoidant adult attach- ment (Brennan et al., 1998). Each subscale is comprised of 18 items. "I worry about being abandoned" and "I worry a lot about my relationships" are representative of items making up the anxious attachment orientation subscale. "I prefer not to show a partner how I feel deep down" and "I get uncomfortable when a romantic partner wants to be very close" are representative of items making up the avoidant attachment orientation subscale. Respondents indicate their level of agreement with each item on a 7-point rating scale (1 = Disagree Strongly; 7 = Agree Strongly), and, following recoding of some reverse-keyed items, item ratings on each subscale are summed to produce total scores, with higher scores indicating higher attachment anxiety and avoidance, respectively. Alpha coefficients for the anxious and avoidant scales reported by Brennan et al. are .94 and .91, respectively, indicating good internal consistency. In the present study, Cronbach alpha coefficients were .90 and .86 for scores on the anxious and avoidant subscales, respectively. Intimate Partner Physical Violence. Physical violence was assessed using the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; Straus, 1979, 1990). The CTS is an 18-item self-report inventory con- sisting of a list of actions the respondent might take in a conflict with his partner. Participants indicated their use of violent tactics in the 12-month period prior to their arrest. The modes of conflict are scored on three dimensions: reasoning, verbal aggression, and physical violence. For the purpose of this study, only the nine-item physical violence subscale was used. Straus (1979) reported that scores on the CTS physical violence subscale obtained a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .83 and demonstrated both construct and concurrent validity. Additionally, evidence of the CTS's concurrent validity is demonstrated by anticipated relationships between CTS violence subscales and variables predictive of male violent behavior toward female partners (i.e., the lower a husband's economic and prestige resources, the greater his tendency to use violence to maintain a male-dominant power position; Straus, 1979, 1990). In the present study, the Cronbach alpha coefficient for the physical violence subscale was .71. Intimate Partner Psychological Violence. Psychological violence was assessed using the short form of the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Scale (PMWS; Tolman, 1989, 1999). The PMWS short form contains 14 items describing various acts of coercion, verbal abuse, and intimidation of intimate partners. Using a 5-point rating scale (1 = Never; 5 = Very Frequently), participants indicated the frequency with which they engaged in these acts of psychological violence in the 6 months prior to their arrest. The PMWS contains two factor-analytically-derived subscales: emotional/verbal abuse and dominance/isola- tion (Tolman, 1989, 1999). Emotional/verbal abuse items include withholding emotional support, verbal attacks, and humiliation. "I called my partner names" and "I treated my partner like an inferior" are representative of items in the emotional/verbal abuse domain. Dominance/isolation items tap the respondent's demands for subservience. "I interfered in my partner's relationships with other family members" and "I restricted my partner's use of the telephone" are representative of dominance/isolation items. Tolman reported Cronbach alpha coefficients for scores on the dominance/isolation and emotional/verbal short subscales of .88 and .92, respectively (Tolman, 1999). In the present study, the two PMWS subscales were strongly intercorrelated (r = .67); therefore, scores on these scales were aggregated to create a composite psychological violence variable that obtained a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .87. 146 Mauricio et al. Social Desirability. When conducting domestic violence research, it is important to control for socially desirable response bias (Arias & Beach, 1987). In this study, the short form of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS; Crowne & Marlowe, 1964) was used. The SDS contains 10 items. "I am quick to admit making a mistake" is repre- sentative of items on the short form of the SDS. Participants were asked to respond on a 7-point Likert scale the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with inventory items. Previous studies using the SDS have yielded Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from .72 (Loo & Thorpe, 2000) to .77 (Crino, Svoboda, Rubenfeld, & White, 1983) and a 1-month interval test-retest reliability coefficient of .86 (Crino et al. 1983). In the present study, a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .74 was obtained. RESULTS Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations for all variables included in the model can be found in Table 1. Scores on the PDQ-R antisocial and borderline personality disorder subscales were significantly and positively correlated with adult attachment orientations. As expected, anxious attachment and borderline personahty disorder scores were highly correlated, and avoidant attachment and antisocial personality disorder scores were correlated. Unexpectedly, PDQ-R antisocial scores were also correlated with anxious attachment, and PDQ-R borderline scores were also correlated with avoidant attachment. Psychological violence was correlated with both anxious and avoidant attachment as well as with PDQ-R antisocial and borderline scores. Physical violence was correlated with anxious attachment as well as with antisocial and borderline scores but not with avoidant attachment. Social desirability was negatively correlated with measures of attachment, personality disorders, and violence, thus justifying its statistical control in our primary analyses (Arias & Beach, 1987). TABLE 1. Descriptives and Zero-Order Correlations for Covariates, Predictors, and Outcomes in Modeis Presented in Fignre 1 and Figure 2 Scale X SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Social 47.59 9.79 desirability 2. Psychological 1.95 .66- .41** violence 3. Physical violence .32 .40 -.20** .46** 4. Borderline PD 3.67 2.09 .50** .57** .36** characteristics 5. Antisocial PD 2.3 1.94 -.52** .47** .36** .60** characteristics 6. Avoidant 3.06 1.05 -.16* .16* .14 .28** .25** attachment 7. Anxious 3.68 1.28 -.40** .50** .24** .57** .41** .23** attachment *p<.05.**p<.0l. Personality, Attachment, and Violence 147 Path modeling with EQS 5.1 (Bentler, 1995) was used to test the hypotheses that the relationship between anxious attachment and violence (physical and psychological) behaviors is mediated by borderline personality disorder and that the relationship between avoidant attachment and violence is mediated by antisocial personality disorder. Because of significant correlations between borderline and antisocial personality scores, anxious attachment and antisocial personality, and avoidant attachment and borderline person- ality, we also explored the possibility of borderline personality disorder mediating the relationship between avoidant attachment and violence and the possibility of antisocial personality disorder mediating the relationship between anxious attachment and violence. Preliminary analyses indicated that the data met assumptions regarding normality, linear- ity, and homoscedasticity. To establish potential mediational pathways, two hypotheses should be supported (see Judd & Kenney, 1981; MacKinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West, & Sheets, 2002): (a) the predictor variable should be significantly related to the mediator, and (b) the mediator should significantly predict the outcome after adjusting for the effect of the predictor. For example, in the mediation model with avoidant attachment, antisocial personality, and violence, avoidant attachment should have a significant path to antisocial personal- ity, and antisocial personality should have a significant path to physical or psychological violence after controlling for avoidant attachment. Given the support of these hypotheses, the effect of antisocial personality in mediating the relation between avoidant attachment and physical or psychological violence or the effect of borderline personality in mediating the relation between anxious attachment and physical or psychological violence can be tested for statistical significance using the multivariate-delta method (MacKinnon et al., 2002; Sobel, 1986). This method calculates the standard error of the mediation effect (the multiplication of the path from the predictor variable to the mediator [path a] and the path from the mediator to the outcome [path b], ab), which is then used to test the significance of the mediation effects (i.e., z = ablSE^^,; z > 1.65 foxp < .05, one-tail test). Figure 1 depicts the results of the mediation analysis for the model with avoidant attach- ment as the predictor, antisocial and borderline personality disorders as the mediators, and physical and psychological violence as the outcomes. Figure 2 depicts the results of the mediation analysis for the model with anxious attachment as the predictor, antisocial and borderline personality disorders as the mediators, and physical and psychological violence Figure 1. Mediational model with avoidant attachment, antisocial and borderline personality disorder scores, and physical and psychological violence. Social Desirability entered as covariate but path to dependent variables not shown for simplicity of presentation. 148 Mauricio et al. Antisocial --^ ^27* Personality Physical ^-^^ \ Anxious \ Violence .028 "^V .145 Attachment .32* .231* z' Psychological Violence Borderline .304*^^ Personality Figure 2. Mediational model with anxious attachment, antisocial and borderline personality disorder scores, and physical and psychological violence. Social Desirability entered as covariate but path to dependent variables not shown for simplicity of presentation. as the outcomes. Because of the saturated nature of these two models, the model fit the data perfectly (i.e., y} [0, N = 192] == 0, RMSEA = 1.00, SRMR = 1.00) for both models. For the model shown in Figure I, avoidant attachment was significantly related to both antiso- cial personahty (P = .17, p < .01) and borderline personality (P = .21, jo < .01). Antisocial personality was significantly related to both physical violence (P = .23, p < .01) and psy- chological violence (P = .16, p < .05). In addition, borderline personality was significantly related to both physical violence (P = .24, p < .01) and psychological violence (P = .42, p < .01). The direct path from avoidant attachment to physical violence or to psychological violence was not significant after taking the mediator variables, antisocial and borderline personality disorders, into account (P = .02, ns; p = -.02, ns, respectively). Results of the multivariate delta method (Sobel, 1982, 1986) indicated that both antisocial and borderline personality disorders were significant mediators of the relation between avoidant attach- ment and physical violence (z = 1.89, p = .05; z = 2.17,/? = .01, respectively) and the relation between avoidant attachment and psychological violence (z - 1.65, p - .05; z - 3.02, ;7 = .01). Antisocial and borderline personality disorders together served as a full mediator of the relation between avoidant attachment and physical violence and psychological violence. A full mediation process is characterized as having a significant mediation pathway with a nonsignificant direct path. A partial mediation process is characterized as having a signifi- cant mediation pathway as well as a significant direct path. The model accounted for 16% of the variance for physical violence and 36% of variance for psychological violence. For the model shown in Figure 2, anxious attachment was significantly related to borderline personality (P = .44, p < .01) and antisocial personality (P = .24, p < .01). Borderline personality was significantly related to both physical violence (P = .23, p < .05) and psychological violence (P = .30, p < .01). Antisocial personality was significantly related to physical violence (P = .23, p < .05) but not psychological violence. After taking borderline and antisocial personality into account, the direct path from anxious attachment to psychological violence remained significant (P = .24, p < .01). However, the direct path from anxious attachment to physical violence was no longer significant. Multivariate delta method results indicated that borderline personality was a significant mediator of the relationship between anxious attachment and physical violence (z - 2.32, p - .01) and the relationship between anxious attachment and psychological violence (z = 3.39, p = .01). In addition, antisocial personality was a significant mediator of the relationship between

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Violence and Victims, Volume 22, Number 2, 2007. Borderline Keywords: etiology; batterer; intervention; borderline personality disorder; antisocial personality
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