This study sought to extend findings of Blasko, Winek and Bieschke (2007) and Blasko and Bieschke (2005) by identifying same-sex and opposite-sex prototypes for a random sample of psychologists as they assess intimate partner violence situations. Intimate terrorism and situational couple violence, defined by Johnson (1995)’s control-based typology, were used to elicit prototypical assessment responses. The influence of participant characteristics (i.e., biological sex, personal abuse history, and attitudes towards intimate partner violence) on assessment was investigated. Using an analogue methodology, intimate terrorism and situation couple violence were depicted in scenarios where the number of control tactics varied between the violence types. A violence-type by couple-type between subjects multivariate analysis was utilized to study the differences in psychologists’ assessment responses. An exploratory analysis of differences in treatment recommendations for violence types and couple types was performed. Opposite-sex intimate terrorism (OS-IT) was assumed to be the baseline prototypical response for assessment in this study. Three groupings of dependent variables (i.e., control, victim and perpetrator assignment, and perceived outcome) were used to test whether the OS-IT prototype emerged.

The results of the two previous studies were not replicated in these studies’ findings. Except for specific instances, biased assessment due to sexual orientation of the couple was not apparent in the assessments. The only biases in assessment between same-sex and opposite-sex couples resulted for male psychologists and psychologists without an abuse history for one perceived outcome variable (i.e., the likelihood the non-initiator of the violence suffers physically and/or psychologically).

The results indicate that this sample of psychologists is assessing intimate partner violence situations using a control-based typology. This means that psychologists appear able to distinguish between SCV and IT based on the number of control tactics presented in the scenarios. An inconsistency between the assessment data and the intervention data was observed. The assessment data shows that psychologists are consistent in assigning victim and perpetrator for both violence types and couple types. The intervention results show differences in recommendations between IT and SCV scenarios and between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Recommendations are made for further research directions. Implications for practitioners are described.