Automatic processes and individual differences in aggressive behavior
Section snippets
Two types of aggression
We will focus our attention on two types of aggression, one more automatic and one more controlled. The critical difference between the two types of aggression involves the level of impulsivity versus deliberation each type of aggression involves. Berkowitz (1993) made this distinction in his classification of aggression as instrumental versus hostile. His cognitive-neoassociationist model Berkowitz, 1969, Berkowitz, 1989, Berkowitz, 1994 suggests that aggression would be impulsive if no
Two systems of information processing
Much empirical and theoretical research in social cognition in the last few decades has been devoted to demonstrating the existence of two systems of information processing, one explicit and the other implicit. In the first, information processing is conscious, controlled and reflective; in the second, information is processed by unconscious, automatic and intuitive processes (e.g., Epstein, 1990, Gawronski and Bodenhausen, 2007, Greenwald and Banaji, 1995, Strack and Deutsch, 2004).
Implicit measures: the case of the Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Several different paradigms for implicit measurement have been developed: affective priming (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell & Kardes, 1986), the Go/No go association task (Nosek & Banaji, 2001), the masked affective priming task (Frings & Wentura, 2003), the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST, De Houwer, 2003) (for reviews, see De Houwer, 2006, Fazio and Olson, 2003). The Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is, by far, the most commonly used paradigm for implicit
The IAT for assessing aggressiveness and predicting aggressive behavior: few answers, many questions
The IAT or other implicit measures are useful for assessing aggressiveness for three primary reasons. First, as we saw before, explicit measures such as self-reports tap only into processes involved in the explicit information processing mode. Second, the IAT has been demonstrated to have incremental validity over and above explicit measures. And finally, aggressive behavior is typically socially undesirable and reports of such are therefore subject to social desirability biases, so the
Interaction between individual differences and situation
Measures of aggression, whether explicit or implicit, aim to assess individual differences. However, these measures do not always predict aggressive behavior. The situation in which the behavior is performed is also a key in the prediction.
Numerous studies have examined the moderating role of the situation in the predictive validity of explicit measures of individual differences in aggressiveness. For example in a meta-analysis of 63 studies, Bettencourt et al. (2006) showed that trait
The role of control in aggressive behavior
Although our discussion so far has focused on automatic processes, we should also briefly consider the issue of control. Given diversity of results and theoretical positions and the lack of consistent results, we do not have space here to examine the issue of when control can occur. Rather, we will focus our attention on the effects of control or, more specifically the effects of a lack of control, on the predictive validity of implicit measures.
Research suggests that control mechanisms are
Some future potential directions
We have raised several issues that could constitute good starting points for future research. First, given the small number of studies on implicit aggressiveness, it will be necessary to conduct additional studies to establish whether the IAT is able to predict aggressive behavior. Particular attention should be devoted to examining type of categories and category labels used to exemplify aggression. It also could be useful to employ other implicit measures such as the Go/No go task (Nosek &
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Impact of violent video game realism on the self-concept of aggressiveness assessed with explicit and implicit measures
2015, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :Never did explicit measures fully converge with implicit measures. These findings indicate a dissociation rather than an overlap between explicit and implicit measures, which is in line with mounting evidence on the utility of implicit measures to explain parts of the variance in aggressive behavior via an automatic (as opposed to a controlled) pathway that can trigger behavioral scripts but is not captured by explicit measures (Richetin & Richardson, 2008). For instance, in studies on incremental validity, the IAT predicted aggression when trait-variables indicated, or situational manipulations created, low self-monitoring, self-control, or executive functioning (e.g., Bluemke & Friese, 2012; Denson, Capper, Oaten, Friese, & Schofield, 2011; Richetin, Richardson, & Mason, 2010; Schmidt, Zimmermann, Banse, & Imhoff, 2015).
A kinematic analysis of the association between impulsivity and manual aiming control
2012, Human Movement ScienceCitation Excerpt :A third color, used in the yellow target, appears in 10% of the conditions, and was inserted to create conflict in the subjects’ response selection. While information processing in low-impulsive subjects is characterized by conscious, controlled and reflective processes, in high-impulsives it is ruled by unconscious, automatic and intuitive processes (Richetin & Richardson, 2008). It is possible that the insightful planning of low-impulsive subjects (Bechara & van der Linden, 2005) reflects in higher duration of reaction time.
State, not trait, neuroendocrine function predicts costly reactive aggression in men after social exclusion and inclusion
2011, Biological PsychologyCitation Excerpt :Thus, situational factors appear to moderate the behaviour of the excluded, with aggressive behaviour after exclusion more likely to occur under conditions of anonymity and when there is no expectation of interaction with the rejector. That aggressive behaviour after exclusion has been found towards others and in the absence of the instigator of the threat to status suggests that aggression may be a behaviour pattern that occurs in response to a variety of threat contexts depending on the extent to which automatic, emotional processing is activated rather than, or relative to, deliberative processing (Anderson and Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 2008; Richetin and Richardson, 2008; Todorov and Bargh, 2002). Recent evidence suggests impulse control and cost-benefit analysis operate in parallel as determinants of aggressive behaviour (e.g., Archer et al., 2010; Archer and Southhall, 2009).
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2021, Acta Psychologica SinicaThe social psychology of aggression: 3rd edition
2020, The Social Psychology of Aggression: 3rd Edition