Perceptions of paternal resemblance predict family violence

Fifty-five men participating in a domestic violence treatment program agreed to complete a questionnaire and rate the degree to which their children looked like them. Ratings of paternal resemblance were positively correlated with the self-reported quality of the men's relationships with their children and inversely proportional to the severity of injuries suffered by their spouses. Analogous results were also found for the men's experience with their parents. We suggest that these results reflect men's use of paternal resemblance to assess paternity. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science inc. All rights reserved.