Elsevier

Aggression and Violent Behavior

Volume 13, Issue 6, November–December 2008, Pages 423-430
Aggression and Violent Behavior

Automatic processes and individual differences in aggressive behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2008.06.005Get rights and content

Abstract

In a context in which aggressive behavior has been predominantly predicted by self-reports, this paper considers how a theoretical and empirical examination of automatic and deliberative processes in information processing and decision making may contribute to our understanding of aggressive behavior. We review research devoted to distinguishing two types of aggression with regard to the level of automaticity or control they involve, a distinction similar to the one between automatic and deliberative processes. In parallel with this theoretical distinction, implicit measures appear to be a good candidate for measuring aggression and predicting aggressive behavior. Although consideration of automatic processes is essential for a better understanding of how and why people act aggressively, it should not lead to the conclusion that aggressive behavior is fully automatic. This contribution underlines that the interaction between environment and individual differences is the key element at the implicit level, as it is at the explicit level. Some future directions for studying aggression using implicit measures are drawn.

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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