A Gendered Approach to Understanding the Roles of Social Bonding,Personal Control,and Strain on College Dating Violence in Emerging Adulthood

Borrowing insights from concepts that have been shown to predict deviant or criminal outcomes (i.e., social bonding, personal control, and strain), this study examined dating violence from the perpetrators’ and gender-relevance perspective among young college students (18–25 years old). This study raised 2 research questions: Were social bonding, personal control, and strain associated with college dating violence? How did these associations differ by gender? In sum, 2 types of social bonding (commitment to goal attainment and spending time with delinquent peers) were linked to psychological aggression in dating. Whereas self-control was negatively related to dating violence perpetration, antisocial tendencies were associated with physical aggression. Further, all the strain measures (i.e., daily hassles, relationship distress, and couple conflict) had a positive association with dating violence. When gender was considered, self-control had a protective effect for women and antisocial tendencies served as a risk factor for increased psychological violence among men.