If disputes are ever-present in human interaction, all relational dyads contain potential offenders and targets. We theorize that each dyad partner’s self-control independently influences the likelihood of violence and that low self-control will express itself in provocative behaviour. Using two waves from the Interpersonal and Conflict Resolution survey, with measures collected from each member of 443 couples, we create dyads and analyse the independent contributions of the specified variables for both would-be offenders and the potential target. We found that a potential target with low self-control was more likely to be attacked by the actor, irrespective of the actor’s self-control. This effect was explained by a tendency of both partners to engage in verbally provocative behaviour. These results are supportive of self-control theory’s predictions concerning the importance of target decision-making and indicate that other criminological theories can profit from considering the target’s role in violent crime causation.

中文翻译：

---

预测演员-目标关系二元组中的暴力概率：作为相互属性的自我控制和人际挑衅

如果在人类互动中始终存在争议，那么所有关系二元组都包含潜在的犯罪者和目标。我们推测，每个二元伴侣的自我控制独立地影响暴力的可能性，并且低自我控制将在挑衅行为中表现出来。使用来自人际和冲突解决调查的两个波，从 443 对夫妇的每个成员收集的措施，我们创建二元组并分析指定变量对潜在犯罪者和潜在目标的独立贡献。我们发现，自控力低的潜在目标更容易受到演员的攻击，而不管演员的自控力如何。这种影响可以通过双方都倾向于进行口头挑衅行为来解释。