What Makes a Person Violent: Literature Review Since the beginning of the human race, domestic violence has been present. However, it was not until recent centuries that people began to look at it as a crime. To many people, in many cultures, domestic violence was seen as not only acceptable, but necessary in some situations. In a study conducted by Hines and Saudino (2002), domestic violence in close, intimate relationships is a country wide problem within the United States. The last nationally conducted survey found that an estimated 16 percent of married Americans experienced domestic violence within the previous year. That means that approximately 8.7 million couples have been affected by domestic violence (Hines, Saudino 2002). …show more content…

The males had to be seriously violent ranging from shoving to weapons. They also must have been abusive six or more times to be included in the study. They also found an equal amount of non-violent partner’s to interview as well. The experiment involved the participation of not only the males, but the participant’s partner as well. They experiment had the couple talk about two things in which typically provoked discourse. While the conversation was in progress, the researchers measured the both party’s heart rate, pulse transmission to finger, and the amplitude of finger pulse. However, the study did not find any increase in the violent husbands compared to that of non-violent husbands. Nevertheless, the wives of the violent partner exhibited an increase in finger pulse amplitude and finger pulse transit time than that of the non-violent partners. The study suggested that, due to the increase in pulse, wives of abusive husbands experience heightened feelings of rage, sadness, worry and fear (Lavinia et. al. 2010). This study shows that research does not support that abusive partner’s experience heightened cardiovascular response to discourse compared to that of non-violent partner. In a different study, Shorey et al. (2011) discusses how much genetically predisposition to trait anger plays a role in female aggression towards their male partner. In the context of this study, trait anger is defined as the genetic predisposition to respond in anger