• Investigating the correlation between women's personality type and spousal abuse
  • Farzaneh Rassaf,1,* Zohreh Shahhosseini,2
    1. Midwifery Counseling, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran ,
    2. Department of Midwifery and Reproductive Health, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran


  • Introduction: Violence against women is an important public health problem that has short-term and long-term mental and physical health consequences for women and their families (1). Factors that contribute to the occurrence of domestic violence may include the personality characteristics of couples and the ways in which couples manage each other's emotions (2). The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the correlation between women's personality types and spousal abuse.
  • Methods: The present study is a comprehensive review study. In this study, 426 articles were obtained through electronic search by entering the desired keywords in Pubmed, Science Direct, Cochrane Library, SID, Magiran and Irandoc databases from the time period covered by these banks until 2023. Finally, 4 studies (2 cross-sectional, 2 descriptive-analytical) in the period from 2002 to 2023, which investigated the correlation between personality traits in women and partner violence, were analyzed.
  • Results: A review of the available articles showed that some personality traits of women are related to spousal abuse. According to the results of a study, agreeableness, conscientiousness and extroversion have a negative correlation with domestic violence. (3). Another study found a significant relationship between neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness with violence. So that neurotic women were more abused by their husbands (p<0.0001) and women who were extroverted, agreeable and conscientious were less abused by their husbands (4). In a study of neuroticism, psychological violence and physicality, conscientiousness predicted sexual violence and extroversion predicted physical violence (p≤0.05) (5). In another study, there was a positive correlation between neurotic personality (r=0.318, p<0.001) with domestic violence and negative correlation between extroversion personality (-0.280, r=P<0.001), agreeableness (-0.201, r=P<0.002) and conscientiousness with domestic violence (265/265) -0, r=0.001 <P) there is (6).
  • Conclusion: Some personality traits such as neuroticism and extroversion are more related to domestic violence. Therefore, by identifying personality traits, it is possible to provide more appropriate treatment outcomes for mental health professionals and effectively prevent the increase of domestic violence.
  • Keywords: spousal abuse; Domestic violence; Personality traits, personality types