Aggressive Behavior最新文献

The purpose of this study was to test whether the psychological inertia process believed to give rise to crime continuity is limited to aggressive delinquency or evolves from both aggressive and nonaggressive delinquency. Self-report data provided by 845 early adolescent youth (406 boys, 439 girls) were analyzed in an effort to test the hypothesis that aggressive rather than nonaggressive delinquency precipitates a rise in delinquency through the intervening influence of cognitive impulsivity but not moral neutralization. The hypothesis stated that of the four models evaluated in this study (aggressive delinquency → moral neutralization → offense variety; aggressive delinquency → cognitive impulsivity → offense variety; nonaggressive delinquency → moral neutralization → offense variety; nonaggressive delinquency → cognitive impulsivity → offense variety), only the aggressive delinquency → cognitive impulsivity → offense variety model would achieve significance. Consistent with this hypothesis, only the aggressive delinquency → cognitive impulsivity → offense variety pathway was, in fact, significant. The current findings suggest that the psychological inertia process may be driven by a pattern of aggressive delinquency followed by cognitive impulsivity and that neither nonaggressive delinquency nor moral neutralization contribute to the process. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

This paper re-examined the factor structure of a recently developed parent report of aggression, the Provoked and Unprovoked Aggression Questionnaire, and evaluated measurement invariance and latent mean differences across gender, age, and time. Participants were 333 mothers of toddlers (younger age group: n = 167, 53.9% boys, M_{age Time 1} = 18.30 months, SD = 0.45; older age group: n = 166, 48.8% boys, M_{age Time 1} = 24.29 months, SD = 0.38) who filled out provoked (eight items) and unprovoked (five items) aggression scales twice over a 3-month period. We found evidence for the configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance—a requirement needed to make a meaningful comparison between aggression means across gender, age groups, and time. When comparing means for boys and girls, gender differences emerged earlier for unprovoked than provoked aggression. Also, the frequency of provoked aggression increased among younger, but not older, toddlers. By developing a brief parental report of aggression in toddlerhood, we hope to fill a void of early aggression measures that tap the contextual variability in aggressive behaviors, and thereby stimulate more research to further our understanding of different types of aggression and their correlates in toddlerhood.

This study examined whether two personality traits, attachment anxiety, and the Dark Triad, longitudinally promote stalking behaviors after romantic breakups through psychological maltreatment of partners during relationships and maladjusted reactions to breakups. We conducted a prospective longitudinal study across four waves of assessment for 1 year of individuals in romantic relationships in Japan. They completed measures of attachment anxiety, the Dark Triad, need for control, and psychological intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration at Wave 1, and measures of maladjusted reactions to breakups (i.e., anger and rumination) and stalking behaviors at a wave after breakups. The final sample consisted of 356 participants who were involved in romantic relationships at Wave 1 and left by their partners during the survey period. Correlational analysis showed that the Dark Triad at Wave 1 was significantly positively associated with future stalking behaviors, but attachment anxiety was not. Structural equation modeling showed that attachment anxiety and the Dark Triad increased future stalking behaviors after breakups through psychological IPV perpetration during relationships. Additionally, attachment anxiety increased future stalking behaviors through higher levels of postbreakup anger and rumination. Conversely, we did not find any indirect effects of the Dark Triad on stalking behaviors through these reactions toward breakups. Overall, these results suggest that it is necessary to consider personality traits that could damage intimate relationships and to focus on the quality of romantic relationships to prevent stalking after romantic breakups. These results also indicate that emotion regulation may be useful in preventing stalking caused by attachment anxiety.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning has been proposed as a relevant method to characterize the therapeutic needs of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators. Nevertheless, research has neglected the influence of the ANS on socio-affective functions in this population. The aim of the present study was to analyze the psychophysiological activity of IPV perpetrators (n = 52) compared to controls (n = 46) following an empathic induction task, performed through negative emotion-eliciting videos. We employed two general ANS markers (heart rate [HR] and respiratory rate [RR]), two sympathetic-related indexes (pre-ejection period [PEP] and skin conductance level [SCL]) and a parasympathetic biomarker (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]). Additionally, we explored the impact of psychophysiological activity on prosocial behavior using Hare's donation procedure. Compared to controls, IPV perpetrators reported lower HR and SCL following the task, as well as longer PEP, suggesting an attenuated sympathetic response to others' distress. No differences in the RSA response pattern were found, however, IPV perpetrators displayed lower overall RSA levels throughout the protocol, indicative of reduced parasympathetic activity. Besides, while no differences in prosocial performance were observed, greater sympathetic responses and overall parasympathetic activity predicted increased donations across the sample. Thus, a high sympathetic and parasympathetic activity might influence the occurrence of prosocial behavior. The present study provides further evidence supporting that IPV perpetrators cope differently with others' negative emotions. In line with this biopsychosocial perspective, insights are gained on the emotional processing of IPV perpetrators which, in turn, could contribute to improve IPV psychotherapeutic programs.

People more readily harm members of outgroups than ingroups, often enjoying the inflicted agony. Yet it remains unclear how these malevolent tendencies towards outgroups relate to sadism. Sadists often harm others, driven by a desire to feel pleasure from their suffering. In attempt to bridge these two lines of research, this work examined relationships between sadism and aggression against ingroup and outgroup members in three studies (total N = 755) that focused on two groups with a history of conflict (i.e., the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland). Across all studies, British participants’ sadistic tendencies were just as strongly linked to their aggression against ingroup members (i.e., British partners) as to their aggression against outgroup members (i.e., Irish partners). Despite this lack of a preference for greater outgroup aggression, they tended to enjoy outgroup aggression more than ingroup aggression, especially at its extreme levels. These findings extend works linking sadism to aggression into the domain of intergroup relations and bind together research on sadism and intergroup schadenfreude.

The coevolution of bullying and friendship networks and the moderating effects of classroom bullying popularity norms were examined in a sample of 965 students (52.1% boys) in 22 fourth- and fifth-grade classes. Longitudinal social network analysis showed that children were more likely to bully their friends' victims (bully influence effect) and to be bullied by their friends' bullies (victim influence effect); two children bullying the same child were likely to be friends (bully selection effect), and two victims bullied by the same child were likely to be friends (victim selection effect). Bullying popularity norms served as moderators, and the bully selection effect was significant weaker in the context of low bullying popularity norms. This study adds understanding of bullying as a group process and provides implications for preventing school bullying.

In this study, using the self/other adjective judgment task, we aimed to explore how people perceive themselves in comparison to various other people, including friends, strangers, and those they dislike. Next, using representational similarity analysis, we sought to elucidate how these perceptual similarities and differences are represented in brain activity and how aggressiveness is related to these representations. Behavioral ratings show that, on average, people tend to consider themselves more like their friends than neutral strangers, and least like people they dislike. This pattern of similarity is positively correlated with neural representation in social and cognitive circuits of the brain and negatively correlated with neural representation in emotional centers that may represent emotional arousal associated with various social objects. Aggressiveness seems to predispose a person to a pattern of behavior that is the opposite of the average pattern, that is, a tendency to think of oneself as less like one's friends and more like one's enemies. This corresponds to an increase in the similarity of the behavioral representation with the representation in the emotional centers and a decrease in its similarity with the representation in the social and cognitive centers. This can be seen as evidence that in individuals prone to aggression, behavior in the social environment may depend to a greater extent on the representation of social objects in the emotional rather than social and cognitive brain circuits.

Youth violence continues to be widespread. Despite numerous evidence-based programs that reduce youth violence, objective ways to identify youth in need of services is lacking. Few screening tools are available that enables practitioners or community organizations to predict who may perpetrate serious violence. The Violence Injury Protection and Risk Screen (VIPRS) is a previously validated screening tool providing a framework to address youth violence. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the VIPRS in a community sample for use in multiple settings. Youth participating in a community-focused youth violence prevention intervention served as the study subjects. Households with youth ages 10−17 were eligible to participate. Study personnel verbally asked youth survey questions and recorded answers on a laptop. Multiple measures—including risk factors for violent behavior as well as, violence and delinquency scales, were asked. Eleven hundred youth participated. Mean age was 13.3; 53% female, 26% Black, 58% Hispanic, 11% more than 1 race. Twenty percent screened positive on the VIPRS—28% male versus 13% female (p = .000). Violence-related behaviors were common: 33% were in a physical fight, 27% experienced cyberbullying victimization, and 9% perpetrated a minor assault. The VIPRS demonstrated robust criterion validity with significant correlation to multiple violence measures (0.3−0.6). Scoring positive on the VIPRS conveyed increased odds of reporting other violent behaviors, such as perpetrating physical aggression (OR: 7 [95% CI: 5.1−11.5]). Overall, the VIPRS performed well in a community sample of youth further validating its psychometric functioning while demonstrating the potential for use in settings beyond healthcare.

Researchers of aggression have classically focused on what has been previously called active aggression—the deliberate infliction of harm through the direct application of deleterious consequences. However, the counterpart to this, what was originally called passive aggression, has gone understudied, and its definition has mutated beyond its original conceptualization. The present two studies (N's 196 and 220, respectively) attempted to examine passive aggression as originally defined—the deliberate withholding of behavior to ensure that a target is harmed—and renaming it aggression by omission (ABO), in contrast to aggression by commission (ABC). These studies found that both fit within a similar nomological network of antagonism, Sadism, and trait aggression. Study 2 additionally found that both were equally affected by provocation and were considered equally harmful. These findings encourage further research into ABO to capture this construct concretely, especially in the context of common paradigms (e.g., the Taylor Aggression Paradigm, Hot Sauce, Point-Subtraction Aggression Paradigm), and trait aggression scales, which typically measure ABC.

Radicalization is a process by which individuals are introduced to an ideological belief system that encourages political, religious, or social change through the use of violence. Here we formulate an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) model of radicalization that links obsessive passion (OP; one of the best predictors of radical intentions) to a larger body of clinical research. The model's central tenet is that individual differences in OCD symptom severity could shape radical intentions via their influence on OP. Across four ideological samples in the United States (Environmental activists, Republicans, Democrats, and Muslims, N_total = 1114), we found direct effects between OCD symptom severity and radical intentions, as well as indirect effects of OCD on radical intentions via OP. Even after controlling for potential individual difference and clinical confounds (e.g., adverse childhood experiences, loss of significance, and substance abuse), these relationships remained robust, implying that OCD plays a significant role in the formation of violent ideological intentions and opening new avenues for the treatment and prevention of violent extremism. We discuss the implications of conceptualizing radicalization as an OCD-like disorder with compulsive violent tendencies and ideology-related concerns.