RESEARCHERS BUCK AGGRESSION VIEWS.

Byline: Abigail Zuger The New York Times

In the old Punch and Judy shows of the last century, Punch would batter Judy under the stage while the audience roared. But now it seems likely that in their private moments together, Judy gave Punch back a bit of his own.

Researchers studying human aggression are discovering that, in contrast to the usual stereotypes, patterns of aggression among girls and women under some circumstances may mirror or even exaggerate those seen in boys and men. And while women's weapons are often words, fists may be used, too.

In a large-scale review of dozens of studies of physical hostility in heterosexual relationships, Dr. John Archer, a psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire in Great Britain, has found that although women sustain more serious and visible injuries than men during domestic disputes, overall they are just as likely as men to resort to physical aggression during an argument with a sexual partner.

Archer compiled interviews with tens of thousands of men and women in Canada, Great Britain, the United States and New Zealand and discovered that women who argued with their dates or mates were actually even slightly more likely than men to use some form of physical violence, ranging from slapping, kicking and biting to choking or using a weapon. The pattern was particularly pronounced among younger women and women who were dating a partner rather than married to or living with him, he said.

``Whatever the base rate of physical aggression in the population, women tended to have a slightly higher rate than men,'' Archer said. In contrast, though, most instances of serious violence in his study were caused by men, as were most injuries that required medical care: Women accounted for 65 to 70 percent of those requiring medical help as a result of violence between partners.

Archer's study was reported at a meeting of the International Society for Research on Aggression held at Ramapo College in Mahwah, N.J., earlier this month. It is an extraordinary study, said Dr. Anne Campbell, a psychologist at the University of Durham in Great Britain, because it lends support to an emerging theory that women may respond to certain environmental stresses with physically aggressive behaviors that are analogous to men's, although often on a different scale of intensity.

For instance, she said, criminologists know that although men are more likely to commit crimes than women, crime rates in the genders are also strongly correlated. In other words, in impoverished, ``high crime'' areas, rates of both violent and nonviolent crimes increase proportionally among men and women.

``Unlike men, though, women tend to view crime as work rather than adventure,'' Dr. Campbell said. For example, women spend more of the proceeds of nonviolent crimes on staples rather than on luxuries. And women often commit violent crimes against other women with the very pragmatic purpose of attracting the protection and financial support of a ``well-resourced'' man.

Patterns of domestic homicide also indicate that women are capable of significant violence, although often only as a last resort. Although the vast majority of all murders are committed by men, ``intimate partner'' homicides were split about equally between the sexes until about 20 years ago, said Dr. Daniel Nagin, a public policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Until about five years ago, scientists studying aggression tended to include only direct physical or verbal efforts to injure another person. Then they discovered that great damage can be done to another person so subtly that even the victim is unaware of the process. The bad-mouthing, gossip and elaborate smear campaigns that can demolish an opponent as effectively as direct verbal or physical assaults are now formally known in psychological circles as ``indirect aggression,'' and their patterns are tracked as carefully as punches and kicks.

With indirect aggression factored into the mix, aggressive behavior in childhood is no longer primarily a male affair.

In a large observational study of ``trajectories of aggression'' in children, Dr. Richard Tremblay of the Universite de Montreal has found that physical aggression in both sexes seems to peak around age 2, then decline steadily, although it remains consistently more common in boys. Indirect aggression follows the opposite trajectory - it becomes more prevalent as children grow older and is consistently more common in girls.