Emotional processing in batterers as assessed by Test Ekman Facial Expressions and Emotional Stroop Task in intimate partner violence situations

Current research in the field of intimate partner violence has been scarce as regards the role of emotional processing in abusers. Nevertheless, no study has investigated the ability to recognize emotions and the influence of emotions on attention-related aspects among the same sample. The aim of this study is to investigate the ability to recognize emotions in standardized photographs, and to analyze the interference that words with emotional content exert on an attention task in a sample of abusers. The sample consisted of 90 men convicted of intimate partner violence and 77 men convicted of other crimes. Demographic characteristics associated to the sample were evaluated, as were emotional processing of facial expressions with the Ekman Test and the Emotional Stroop task, specifically designed to assess emotional processing in situations of intimate partner violence. The results showed better emotional recognition among abusers in the recognition of facial emotions of anger and surprise. As for the processing of words with emotional content, differences were not statistically significant. (C) 2015, Konrad Lorenz University Foundation. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC ND Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).