Male entrapment and its charm warrant: A systematic review characterising male entrapment behaviours of domestic abuse, how they are described and researched

Abstract

Background: Research and policy traditionally focus on female victim-survivors of domestic abuse. Therefore, behaviour change approaches for male perpetrators of abuse look at the same, rather than focusing on the root cause of the problem — men who use abusive behaviours. This systematic review aimed to identify studies that characterise entrapment behaviours and how male perpetrators describe those behaviours.

Method: The review used a systematic meta-analysis design, conducting an electronic search via databases with a two-stage strategy employed to locate literature and pinpoint key themes and concepts to explore coercive control and male entrapment behaviours of domestic abuse. The protocol was pre-registered on PROSPERO. Nine articles were identified within the review as being of interest, and this paper provides a narrative synthesis which details the results of the systematic review.

Results: The narrative synthesis identified unities between some articles, which were labelled as commonalities. There are four commonalities: male behaviour, coercive control, charm and charisma and power. Critically the review only returned one article directly examining male behaviours of entrapment, with the findings still valid a decade later, but shows more research needs to be built upon this.

Conclusion: This review showed that male behaviour within domestic abuse is chronically under-researched, and behaviours utilised by male perpetrators of abuse to entrap and coercively control a female partner need further investigation, but that charm and power is an area of interest.