Connections between moral psychology and intimate partner violence: Can IPV be read through moral psychology?

Aggression and Violent Behavior 22 (2015) 120–127

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Aggression and Violent Behavior

Connections between moral psychology and intimate partner violence: Can IPV be read through moral psychology? María L. Vecina a,⁎, Daniela Marzana b, Mariola Paruzel-Czachura c a b c

Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 Madrid, Spain Facoltà di Psicologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy Zakład Psychologii Ogólnej, Instytut Psychologii, Uniwersytet Śląski, Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia, Poland

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 1 October 2014 Received in revised form 26 February 2015 Accepted 23 April 2015 Available online 2 May 2015 Keywords: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Moral psychology Moral self-concept Self-deception Sacredness Moral absolutism

a b s t r a c t Connections between two traditionally separate fields, Moral Psychology and Intimate Partner Violence, are made in this paper with the ultimate goal of improving the psychological interventions dealing with this persistent and prevalent social problem. Three current research conclusions in the field of moral psychology lead us to posit that men who use violence against the partner may be affected by moral paradoxes at the beginning of the psychological treatment that make them reluctant to change their behavior. These conclusions are the following: a) sacred moral values can lead to violent actions, b) the certainty about one's moral principles creates a license to behave immorally, and c) self-deception mechanisms allow people to claim to be acting morally while acting selfishly. Following these ideas that allow people to live happily thinking that they are very moral individuals regardless of their actual behavior, we posit that men who use violence against their partners may also be trapped in such paradoxical mechanisms. Recent empirical results support these ideas and demonstrate that men convicted of domestic violence have an absolutist conception about what is right and wrong, a sacred vision of the five moral foundations, a high moral self-concept, and high levels of self-deception mediating between their extreme moral vision of the world and their high moral self-concept. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents 1. 2. 3.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intimate Partner Violence is not a disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Connections between very important moral beliefs and violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. From morality to violence through sacredness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. From morality to violence through moral absolutism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3. From morality to violence through an inflated moral self-conception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. The gap between the moral self-concept and the moral behavior: may we have a license to kill sometimes? 5. Where there is a gap, there will be self-deception also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Conclusions: men who use violence against their partners through the moral lens . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Future research and practical implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. Introduction

⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.L. Vecina), [email protected] (D. Marzana), [email protected] (M. Paruzel-Czachura).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2015.04.013 1359-1789/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Morality is about what is right and wrong within a social group; and three specific connections have been recently developed in the field of Moral Psychology that can be applied to the field of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). The first connection establishes that the more people hold some moral concerns sacred, the more they are willing to fight for them

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(Graham & Haidt, 2012; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). The second connection reveals that when people feel that they are sufficiently moral in a given domain, their motivation to be moral in other domains decreases (Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010; Monin & Miller, 2001). The third connection focuses on self-deception mechanisms that allow people to believe that they are acting morally while actually acting selfishly (von Hippel & Trivers, 2011). As a result, we have some moral paradoxes that may lead people to defend peace by war, relax their moral behavior because they feel moral enough, or feel altruistic while defending their own interests. In this paper, we propose that the phrase so often said in therapy, “I hit her, but I love her,” constitutes another moral paradox that needs to be investigated because cocktails of love and hate and right and wrong are common at the beginning of the psychological treatment and hinder changes. This proposal is especially important in a context where court-mandated psychological treatments are prescribed for more people every year and there is not enough empirical evidence of their effectiveness (Gondolf, 2011; Lehmann & Simmons, 2009; Simmons & Lehmann, 2009; Stith, McCollum, Amanor‐Boadu, & Smith, 2012; Stover, Meadows, & Kaufman, 2009).

social system (Haidt, 2008), specific connections between strong moral beliefs and violence have been developed by some authors in recent years. Hirschberger and Pyszczynski (2012) see moral issues lying at the heart of virtually all intergroup conflicts, and Baumeister and colleagues see moral idealism as the cause of the major violent atrocities of the twentieth century (Baumeister, 1997; Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996; Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). Skitka and colleagues posit that moral convictions can provide a motivational foundation for violent acts (Skitka, 2010) and showed that the degree to which people view issues through moral convictions is an important predictor of discrimination against those who do not share their moral point of view (Bauman & Skitka, 2009; Skitka, 2002; Skitka, Bauman, & Lytle, 2009; Skitka & Mullen, 2002). Even more recently, Graham, Haidt, and colleagues illustrated that the process of sacralizing objects according to sacred values, and the attendant process of developing a vision of evil in whatever threatens those objects, can lead to violent actions even if those sacred values are radically opposed to violence, such as nurturance, care or peace (Graham & Haidt, 2012).

2. Intimate Partner Violence is not a disease

Sacredness refers to the human tendency to invest people, places, times, and ideas with an importance far beyond the utility they possess (Graham & Haidt, 2012) and is a crucial social concept for understanding what a social group deems right and wrong. From an instrumental perspective, sacred values would be an anomaly because they tend to be resistant to cost-benefit analyses and hence individuals engage in acts that are harmful to themselves or to others in order to defend them (Ginges, Atran, Sachdeva, & Medin, 2011). However, recent works suggest that decisions to take part in and support political violence seem to be driven by moral reasoning (Atran, 2003; Ginges, 1997; Ginges & Atran, 2011) and show that people tend to reason about political violence in a non-instrumental manner (Ginges & Atran, 2009), that is, they seem to be motivated by moral commitments to collective sacred values, regardless of the presence of personal selective incentives. Men who use violence against the partner may be fighting by material and nonmaterial selective incentives, such as reputation and status (Daly & Wilson, 2001), or by sacred values regarding hierarchy and authority. Both kinds of reasons seem to be good enough to fight and can reinforce each other without contradiction. Living in a sacred cosmos is convenient and comfortable because it allows people to share meanings and binds them together (Graham & Haidt, 2010). However, along with such a sacred vision of the world arises a vision of evil in whatever threatens the vision (Haidt & Algoe, 2004). Evil entails cruelty and violence and has been traditionally operationalized in terms of harming others intentionally (Baumeister, 1996; Zimbardo, 2007). However, recently, the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) has proposed that perceptions of evil may be based on concerns other than harm, such as fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity (Graham et al., 2009; Haidt, 2007, 2008; Haidt & Graham, 2007). Each of these five basic concerns proposed by the theory has a moral evil counterpart: (1) cruelty and violence for the harm foundation; (2) racism, sexism, and oppression for fairness; (3) betrayal for ingroup; (4) anarchism and subversion for authority; and (5) atheism, hedonism, and materialism for purity. To prevent the moral evil, violent offensives can emerge naturally when someone or something threatens these sacred moral concerns. The need to defend what we see sacred—whether peace or war, freedom or slavery, my interests or yours—can quickly become an attack on those who question these issues. Empirical results linking the sacralization of the five moral foundations and specific types of violence are very scarce. Some early research data show that women sacralize the five moral foundations more than men; conservatives sacralize the Ingroup, Authority and Purity foundations more than liberals, what has been related to idealistic violence (Graham & Haidt, 2012); and those who hold pro-war attitudes sacralize Ingroup concerns significantly more, and Harm and Fairness

It is tempting to explain violence by resorting to pathology. When faced with an immoral action, people sometimes deem those who perform the action unhealthy (Tengland, 2012). This is especially true if the actions are of a serious nature, e.g., murder, assault, or rape. These violent behaviors are all present in IPV (Basile & Hall, 2011), especially in what has been called intimate terrorism (Johnson, 2011), but also, although less intensively, in other patterns described: Coercive Controlling Violence, Violent Resistance, Situational Couple Violence, and SeparationInstigated Violence (Kelly & Johnson, 2008). However, in all these cases, the pathology would be in the perceiver's eye and not necessarily in the person who perpetrates violent behaviors against the partner. In spite of this, empirical research has been mainly focused on personality disorders and higher rates of certain psychiatric characteristics have been found among batterers, such as antisocial, borderline, and narcissistic characteristics (Dutton & Golant, 1995; Ferrer, Bosch, García, Manassero, & Gili, 2004; Gondolf & White, 2001; Gottman, Jacobson, Rushe, & Shortt, 1995; Hamberger & Hastings, 1988, 1990; Hastings & Hamberger, 1988; Holtzworth-Munroe & Stuart, 1994; Torres & Lemos-Giráldez, 2013). However, researchers have been unable to identify a uniform batterer personality profile (Ali & Naylor, 2013; Dixon & Browne, 2003; Hart, 1998; Rode, 2010). Research has also been focused prominently in drug and alcohol use and previous history of violence in the family of origin. These circumstances have been shown to be consistent risk factors for the use of violence toward a female partner (Coleman, Weinman, & Hsi, 1980; Fitch & Papantonio, 1983; Sugarman & Hotaling, 1989; Telch & Lindquist, 1984). However, the effect sizes for these associations seem to be weak (Foran & O'Leary, 2008; MacEwen & Barling, 1988; Stith et al., 2000). These factors can lead to psychological diseases, but they are not diseases in themselves, and some batterers may be affected, but many others are not. Although the heterogeneous nature of male perpetrators of IPV must be recognized(Johnson,2011),inmostcases,psychologistsfind“normal”men standing before them (Stanley, Fell, Miller, Thomson, & Watson, 2012); that is,individualswhohaveanormalsociallife,satisfyingfriendshipsandworking relationships, unsuspicious, coming from different socio-cultural backgrounds and often convinced of having based their own behavior on a deep moral integrity. That is especially true in the case of the more and more men sentenced to psychological treatment instead of prison. 3. Connections between very important moral beliefs and violence Although morality functionally works by either constraining or enabling a wide range of admissible behaviors for the members of any

3.1. From morality to violence through sacredness

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concerns significantly less (Graham & Haidt, 2012; Koleva, Graham, Iyer, Ditto, & Haidt, 2012). Following these antecedents, it has recently been shown that, controlling for gender and political orientation, men convicted of domestic violence have a clear tendency to sacralize the five moral foundations (Vecina, 2014). It seems also that the Authority foundation emerges as a key factor in distinguishing the violent and the non-violent men participants. This moral concern underlies the virtues of leadership and obedience, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions. Its sacred values would be respect, tradition, and honor, and its evils would be anarchism, revolution, and subversion. It would make sense, according to the patriarchal models that have been used to explain IPV (Anderson, 1997; Johnson, 1995), that men who have violently abused their partners present an exceptionally high regard for this foundation. Its sacralization may underlie and lead to understanding a hierarchical conception of the relationships between women and men that may result in a violent defensive offense when threatened. More research is needed to determine what other moral foundations may be especially important for men who use violence against the partner and what others may not be, as well as different problematic profiles. In this regard, the Purity foundation could be another candidate since it is been found a close relationship between ambivalent sexism and what could be understood as a moral concern related to purity: preference for marrying a virgin (Sakalh-Uğurlu & Glick, 2003). Particular settings of the five moral foundations may also serve to root a morality that legitimizes violence against women, and it could be argued that a combination of low regard for the Fairness foundation and a high regard for the Authority foundation may be related to the sexist attitudes held by men who use violence against their partners. Future research needs to address also the stability or variability of the moral foundations profiles because they can be interpreted as the real moral foundations of men convicted of domestic violence or as a self-serving process of shifting morality. Recent research on morality shifting shows that people may shift their more valued moral foundations in a motivated response to threats to their identity, particularly they shift from the moral principles of Harm and Fairness to those of Ingroup and Authority as a response to wrongdoings committed inside Ingroup (Giner-Sorolla, Leidner, & Castano, 2012; Leidner & Castano, 2012). Research is also needed to improve the measuring instruments. The Moral Foundation Questionnaire (MFQ) (Graham et al., 2011) includes two items directly related to the relationships between men and women, one to measure the Authority foundation (“Men and women each have different roles to play in society”), and another to measure the Purity foundation (“Chastity is an important and valuable virtue”) but there are not equivalent items in the Moral Foundations Sacredness Scale (MFSS) (Graham & Haidt, 2012). 3.2. From morality to violence through moral absolutism Because of natural biases toward the self (Baumeister, 1989; Greenwald & Krieger, 2006) and the Ingroup from which a person's beliefs often originate (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), there is a strong tendency for individuals to consider their own point of view as more correct. That leads them to perceive their own moral beliefs to be the “right” ones (McGregor, 2006; McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). Moral absolutism, understood as the degree to which people believe that their own definition of morality is objectively correct (Peterson, Smith, Tannenbaum, & Shaw, 2009), has been related to moral exporting, a behavior that arises to confirm certain ways of thinking about morality with the explicit purpose of bringing others into line with the self, rather than the self in line with others. Peterson and colleagues think of moral absolutism as an individual difference in the perception of the objective truth of one's own set of moral beliefs, stemming from epistemic motivations for certainty. The higher individuals score on moral certainty, the more they endorse the idea that morals should not vary by culture, person, or situation

because they are “true”. Moreover, higher scores on this measure reflect the degree to which people see their own set of moral values as the only correct set to be adopted, to the extent that deviations from this set of values in a given person or culture constitute immorality. Seeing the world in such a way is pleasant but also unrealistic and problematic (Triandis, 2009, 2011). Diversity is everywhere, including in the moral domain, where a huge variety of beliefs and practices can create an appreciable amount of uncertainty and threat, which humans in general are motivated to manage and resolve and that may also be related to violent answers (Haidt, Rosenberg, & Hom, 2003). Therefore, it is not a surprise that moral absolutism strengthens the relationship between religiosity and support for violent warfare (Shaw, Quezada, & Zárate, 2011). Following these ideas, a recent study portrays men convicted of domestic violence as holding significantly higher levels of moral absolutism and self-deception than a comparative group of professional male psychologists. For them, what is right and wrong is a matter of black and white with no gray area (Vecina, Chacón, & PérezViejo, 2015). Paradoxically, they felt as moral and as good as the comparative sample, or even more so. These results would be compatible with the idea suggested by Shaw et al. (2011) that those who perpetrate acts of violence are not driven by clinical pathologies. Rather, they may be uninhibited by concerns for the moral consequences of their actions. Men who commit violence against the partner may be uninhibited by concerns for the moral consequences of their actions because they have their own moral self-concerns to worry about. 3.3. From morality to violence through an inflated moral self-conception Having high self-esteem is something functional and desirable by everyone, and people strive to preserve and enhance it, as much as possible (Taylor & Brown, 1994). However, research has deeply explored the dark side of high self-esteem in terms of vanity, narcissism, arrogance, prejudice, denial of responsibility for failure, and ultimately aggression and violence (Baumeister, 1997; Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; Baumeister et al., 1996; Blaine & Crocker, 1993; Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). It seems that high, not low, self-esteem, combined with an ego threat, is a common cause of violence. In spite of this, we all seem strongly motivated to avoid the loss of esteem and to change toward more unflattering views of ourselves (Swann, Rentfrow, & Guinn, 2003). This same pattern of discrepant appraisals and violence may be even more intensive in people with an inflated moral self-conception, which seems to occur quite readily, as there is a well-known tendency to overestimate one's goodness in the more ambiguous, private, and subjective moral dimension (Alicke & Govorun, 2005; Allison, Messick, & Goethals, 1989; Felson, 1981; Kruger, 1999; Taylor & Brown, 1994). A very good moral self-conception is easily threatened by others' actions, in such a way that a greater self-concept is associated with a greater range of external feedback that may be perceived as unacceptably wrong, which can lead to violent defensive reactions toward the source of the negative appraisal or even toward another source in the case of the source being unavailable (Yu, 2013). Certainly, it is very difficult to treat others as honestly and fairly as they think they deserve; we cannot trust someone's word as much as he or she trusts in him or herself; we cannot see and treat others as, for instance, generous, sympathetic, and hardworking, to the extent that they believe themselves to be. People believe strongly in their own morality (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008), even while simultaneously facing serious difficulties in maintaining a flawless moral record. These difficulties do not stop individuals from sincerely believing that they are morally better than the average person (Allison et al., 1989; Felson, 1981), but generate huge discrepancies between moral self-perception and moral behavior. To overcome such discrepancies, it has been proposed that the moral self-concept must be dynamic and must account for the context in which the behavior takes place (Jordan, Mullen, & Murnighan, 2011; Monin & Jordan, 2009) in such a way that an individual may preserve and enhance his or her global positive moral self-conception by actually

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behaving in a moral manner or by cognitively biasing his or her construal of the world to favor self-flattering information and dismissing those who pose a threat. There is no reason to think that men who use violence against their partners agree with the negative feedback they receive or think of themselves as immoral violent individuals. On the contrary, the minimizations, denials and justifications, etc. observed during psychological treatment are many (Smith, 2007; Stanley et al., 2012), and they can be seen as a type of post-offense reasoning needed even in the absence of offense-supportive beliefs (Ward, Gannon, & Keown, 2006). This might represent an attempt to preserve a morally virtuous image under threatening situations. Consistent with this idea, it has been shown that men convicted of domestic violence experience the Muhammad Ali effect (Allison et al., 1989) to a much greater degree than a sample of non-violent men (Vecina & Chacón, 2015). That is, they perceive themselves as being much more moral and intelligent than others who have never been charged with criminal behavior and have a university degree. Although this tendency to overestimate one's goodness in the moral dimension is common (Alicke & Govorun, 2005) and also exists among psychologists, who are presumably aware of it (Van Lange, Taris, & Vonk, 1997), the results show a significant intensification of this self-serving exaggeration in men convicted of violence against the partner. These results may make sense if we appeal to a moral domain where individuals have to decide what is right and what is wrong and need to feel good about their own morality at the same time. 4. The gap between the moral self-concept and the moral behavior: may we have a license to kill sometimes? Moral and immoral behaviors refer to a wide range of behaviors that are judged according to generally accepted moral norms established by human groups (Reynolds & Ceranic, 2007; Treviño, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006), and being morally virtuous constitutes an important aspect of maintaining a positive identity (Greenwald, 1980; Mazar et al., 2008; Monin & Jordan, 2009). Moral identity coherently drives different moral behaviors (Aquino, Freeman, Reed, Lim, & Felps, 2009; Aquino & Reed, 2002; Blasi, 1984, 2004), which ultimately allow people to live together under a series of common rules (Haidt & Joseph, 2008). Reality, however, continuously obstructs human intentions and coherence, and we find ourselves dealing with the need to rescue our moral identity in the face of our morally dubious actions. This may also be the case among men who use violence against their partners; they need and want to feel good about themselves, but they are not always willing to pay the price associated with doing good (Eisenberg & Shell, 1986). Historically, three main approaches have been used to explain moral behavior. The first was based exclusively on moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1984); i.e., the cognitive understanding of right and wrong. Later, moral self-concept or moral identity was added in an attempt to bridge the moral judgment–action gap (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Augusto Blasi, 1980; Stake, 1994). Aquino and Reed (2002) defined moral identity as a self-concept organized around a set of moral traits and suggested that to the extent that an individual adopts and/or aspires to moral traits, he or she is driven to act in a way that is consistent with these traits (Aquino et al., 2009). According to this view, moral identity works as a self-regulatory mechanism that motivates moral action (Blasi, 1984) and is driven by the need for consistency, i.e., the need for the individual to be true to himself or herself. The key question of moral identity is “How moral am I?” The newest social psychological approach to the moral self accounts for the context in which the behavior takes place (Jordan et al., 2011; Monin & Jordan, 2009; Nisan & Horenczyk, 1990). According to this approach, one's moral selfconcept is understood as dynamic, influenced by subtle situational cues, and part of a global sense of self-worth that individuals are strongly motivated to preserve. In this moral domain, people may preserve this sense by actually behaving in a moral manner or by cognitively

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biasing their construal of the world to favor self-flattering information and dismissing or disparaging those who pose a threat. We can summarize the question here as follows: “How moral do I need to be at this moment?” An example of moral regulation is the moral licensing effect. Research on this concept indicates that when individuals feel that they are sufficiently moral in a given domain, their motivation to be moral in other domains decreases (Khan & Dhar, 2006; McAlister, Bandura, & Owen, 2006; Merritt et al., 2010; Merritt et al., 2012; Monin & Miller, 2001). The problem is that people can secure their moral identity and acquire moral license to be immoral in very different and creative manners (Barkan, Ayal, Gino, & Ariely, 2012); e.g., choosing to overlook information that could call their morality into question (Shu & Gino, 2012; Shu, Gino, & Bazerman, 2011), observing similar people's moral behavior and identifying with their credentials (Kouchaki, 2011), highlighting immoral actions that were not performed and feeling moral, or distorting one's past to make the choices not made seem immoral (Effron, Miller, & Monin, 2012). All these options allow people to relax their moral behavior while feeling sufficiently moral (Jordan & Monin, 2008; Jordan et al., 2011; Monin & Miller, 2001; Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). Obviously, people can always act morally, although this is only one option and not precisely the cheapest. Moral hypocrisy, defined as appearing moral to one's self or others while avoiding the costs associated with actually being moral (Daniel Batson & Collins, 2011; Batson, Thompson, & Chen, 2002; Batson, Thompson, Seuferling, Whitney, & Strongman, 1999), and moral compensation, understood as inflating one's moral self-regard and belittling the moralities of others to compensate for threats to one's self-concept (Jordan & Monin, 2008), constitutes less costly ways to preserve the moral self-concept. In summary, it seems that people adjust their moral behavior to preserve their sensitive moral self-concept: they up-regulate it when they feel they are not moral enough and down-regulate it when they feel that they are already moral people (Conway & Peetz, 2012; Monin & Jordan, 2009; Shaw et al., 2011). If, as seen before, men convicted of domestic violence enjoy a very high moral self-conception, we could expect a general relaxation of their moral behavior, or at least very low motivation to change their questionable moral behaviors because they already feel moral enough. More specifically, they could allow themselves some violent behaviors just because they also feel love for their partners and want the best for them. 5. Where there is a gap, there will be self-deception also Self-deception is defined as the tendency to view oneself in an unrealistically favorable light. It is a non-intentional bias in perceiving the self, unlike impression management, which represents an intentional selfpresentation tactic. It has been argued that it is an important component of well-being and a primary basis of good mental and physical health (Baumeister, 1989; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Erez, Johnson, & Judge, 1995; Kinney, 2000; Robinson, Moeller, & Goetz, 2009; Scheier & Carver, 1985). It also seems to contribute to the development and maintenance of self-concept (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006; Lu & Chang, 2011; Sedikides & Skowronski, 1997). From this perspective, self-deception protects people's beliefs and desires from an opposing reality, which is why it is considered a defensive strategy, adopted by individuals who are having difficulty coping with a threatening world. The hedonic consequences for the self-deceiver are the primary outcome of self-deception. From an evolutionary perspective (von Hippel & Trivers, 2011) it has also been argued that self-deception is an offensive strategy evolved to deceive others, whether to convince them of specific lies or more generally convince them that one is better than appearances (e.g., more moral, stronger, smarter). According to this theory, it is a useful tool in negotiating the social world, where hedonic consequences are not an important endpoint themselves, but only a means to achieve advantages in relationships with others. Taking into account that people are impressed by others' self-confidence (Buss & Duntley, 2011), bolstering

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their image of self and enhancing their self-confidence increase their chances of being influential. For men who use violence against the partner, both objectives may be relevant. On the one hand, they need to deceive themselves to protect their moral self-concept from a threatening reality, and, on the other hand, such a strategy could serve them to better deceive those who may judge them (e.g., family, friends, psychologists, judges). Taking into account that they reap all the emotional benefits of falling outside the optimal margin of self-deception, while the collateral damage is borne by their intimate partners (Baumeister, 1989), they may be strongly affected by self-deception, and self-deception could be a common strategy to deal with an opposing reality. Using a sample of men convicted of domestic violence, recent empirical results have found convergent relationships between (1) selfdeception, (2) a sacred moral vision of the world, including oneself, and (3) satisfaction with life (Vecina, 2014). These results support the idea that some degree of self-deception is necessary: first, to live happy, even if you have been convicted of domestic violence and second, to confer a sacred value to a moral concern and to believe that such a value is more important than others. In addition, it seems that self-deception works as a full mediator between moral absolutism and moral self-concept in men convicted of domestic violence, but not in nonviolent men, and in such a way that the more they felt right about their moral beliefs, the more they deceived themselves, and the more they deceived themselves, the more they felt good about themselves (Vecina et al., 2015). This could mean that self-deception allows them to claim or believe their morality while actually acting selfishly and, thus, makes any change unnecessary. 6. Conclusions: men who use violence against their partners through the moral lens Following several moral paradoxes that allow people to live happily thinking that they are very moral individuals regardless of their actual behavior, we posit that men who use violence against their partners may also be trapped in such paradoxical mechanisms. This would make them resistant to changing their violent actions. Two very recent studies support this idea and show a new and descriptive picture of men convicted of domestic violence during the second day of their court-mandated psychological treatment (Vecina, 2014; Vecina et al., 2015). It appears that these men 1) consider themselves to be more moral than the psychologists who treat them, 2) think that what is right and wrong is black and white and feel quite sure about it, 3) have a strong tendency to invest the five moral foundations on which morality is based with extreme importance that goes far beyond practical considerations, and 4) have a high level of self-deception, probably to hold all these pieces in place. It could be said that it is not a huge discovery that men who use violence against their partners work as everybody does; that is, they defend their beliefs, self-deceive themselves if necessary, and enjoy a pleasant sense of moral worth. The novelty would be that all these elements would be working together and intensively at the beginning of psychological treatment and form a rigid system that may sustain the problem. Most interventions are based on the assumption that men who use violence exhibit different deficits and, therefore, seek to teach different types of control (e.g., control of actions, thoughts or emotions). These interventions may trigger many types of resistance because, as seen before, these men do not exhibit deficits, at least in terms of morality and self-deception. Rather, they exhibit excessively positive moral selfconceptions and strong certainty about their moral beliefs. They would not exhibit lack of control; instead, sophisticated control mechanisms that are sensitive to contextual clues regulate their present and future actions. Understanding men who use violence against their partners as possessing functional mechanisms that work together to preserve functional goals is a promising lead to new and broader

approaches to prevention and intervention (Coker, 2004) because, first, this allows us to better understand the strong resistance to change that men convicted of domestic violence exhibit during psychological treatments; if they feel moral enough, they have no need to change, and if they feel threatened on their more sacred moral concerns, they need to defend them regardless. Second, a new approach may also avoid the polarized views of feminist theories and family violence theories (Lawson, 2012) because the key question to address would not be the initial causal factors, but the factors which actually maintain the problem, which is something that we can test after every intervention. 7. Future research and practical implications There are many questions that need to be addressed. Whether men who use violence against their partners have always thought so highly about themselves or whether such high moral self-conception constitutes a compensation to face some threat requires empirical studies, but already has practical implications. Living with such an inflated moral self-concept seems to be problematic from a practical perspective. In treatment, professional psychologists encounter individuals believing themselves to be very good and willing to reject any change. Equally, self-deception can be a preexisting or developed characteristic to manage a threatening reality. In any case, psychological treatments should recognize these individuals' high levels of self-deception about their own moral perspective and who sincerely need to see things in such a way. Finally, their extreme beliefs about what is right and wrong can be a matter of certainty, a matter of sacralization or even a matter of the nature of the moral convictions, experienced as objective and a universal truth, self-justifying and tied to strong emotions (Skitka, 2010). This should be studied in depth, but the important thing is the paradoxical associations: defensive reactions that include the use of violence. At this point, there are some final considerations. The first one is that there are moral issues for which is very difficult not seeing wrong under conditions of strong conviction, such as those involving harm other people, in general, and IPV, in particular. However, we need also to consider the tipping point, that if it crosses, would make us violent against the violent ones. The second consideration is related to the positive effects of strong moral convictions. Although they can lead us to accepting any means to achieve preferred ends (Bauman & Skitka, 2009), strong moral convictions can also make us more independent in questioning authority, provide us with the courage to become involved in creating a better world, and work functionally to regulate selfish interests (Skitka, 2010; Skitka et al., 2009). Becoming aware of the point where functional becomes dysfunctional could be a new focus for psychological treatments of IPV. Acknowledgments This study received funding from the MECC (PSI2012-35811), what we thank, as well as the collaboration of the Fundación ASPACIA. References Ali, P.A., & Naylor, P.B. (2013). Intimate partner violence: A narrative review of the biological and psychological explanations for its causation. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 18, 373–382. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2013.01.003. Alicke, M.D., & Govorun, O. (2005). The better-than-average effect. The self in social judgment. New York, NY: Psychology Press, 85–106. Allison, S.T., Messick, D.M., & Goethals, G.R. (1989). On being better but not smarter than others: The Muhammad Ali effect. Social Cognition, 7, 275–295. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1521/soco.1989.7.3.275. Anderson, K.L. (1997). Gender, status, and domestic violence: An integration of feminist and family violence approaches. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 59, 655–669. . http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/353952. Aquino, K., Freeman, D., Reed, A., Lim, V.K.G., & Felps, W. (2009). Testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: The interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 123–141. http://dx.doi. org/10.1037/a0015406.

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