Individual Differences in Aggression

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11.29.05

• Individual Differences in Aggression
• 1. Bushman Self-esteem, narcissism
• 2. Meier Agreeableness
• 3. Paulhus Dark triad (mach, narcissism,
  psychopathy)
• 4. Patrick Psychopathy

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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem,
Aggression

• Conventional view
• Aggression and violence
• Like many social problems
• Caused by low self-esteem

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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem,
Aggression

• Problems for conventional view
• master race
• Ideologies
• Playground bullies
• Street gangs
• Often aggressors appear to have a very high
  opinion of self!

4
Bushman (1998) narcissism, self-esteem,
aggression

• But maybe it is not self-esteem, per se, that is
  important as it is narcissism
• Narcissism
• Grandiose self-view
• if I ruled the world, it would be a better
  place
• Related to self-esteem?
• Yes arguments
• No arguments
• Narcissism is more complex than self-esteem..

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Bushman (1998) narcissism, self-esteem,
aggression

• Narcissistic paradox
• Appear to have VERY high SE
• However, it is TOO high to be justified by
  reality
• Will lead to interpersonal conflict
• Im special, how can you treat me that way?
• Who are you to tell ME what to do?
• How dare you criticize me
• Know anyone like this?

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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem,
Aggression

• Present study
• Narcissists are defensive in need for positive
  self-view
• Therefore threatening self-view
• Leads to lashing out or aggression

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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem,
Aggression

• Present study
• Self-esteem
• I feel I am a person of worth
• I take a positive attitude to self
• Narcissism
• I am going to be a great person
• I am more capable than other people
• Correlation r .09
• (higher in other studies r .3 probably)
• Men higher in both SE narcissism

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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem,
Aggression

• Present study
• 260 participants
• 1. Essay on abortion
• 2. Random assignment to feedback
• Negative this is one of the worst essays I ever
  read
• Positive great essay!
• 3. Aggression paradigm
• Setting noise blasts for opponent (if opponent
  loses)
• Dependent noise (amplitude duration)

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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem,
Aggression

• aggression

negative
positive
narcissism
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Bushman (1998) Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and
Aggression

• Conclusions
• 1. Narcissism related to aggression
• Only when negative feedback
• Narcissists have defensive self-views that can be
  threatened by criticism from others
• 2. Self-esteem unrelated to aggression
• 3. High self-esteem may be a heterogeneous
  category
• 2 groups
• Some defensive (narcissistic SE)
• Some not defensive (genuine SE)

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Causes of Anger and Aggression

• Aggression from Social Cognitive Perspective
• Accessibility of hostile thoughts
• Which tend to be increased by violent media
• E.g., Anderson et al. (1998)
• Weapon pictures primed (sped) hostile thoughts
• Such thoughts may guide actions and therefore
  aggressive behavior (concept to action)
• Accessible hostile thought are the culprit!

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Causes of Anger and Aggression

• Emotion Theory
• - blame
• - responsibility in an attributional sense (you!)
• - but a bit hotter than this (jerk!)
• - carries implication of retribution, punishment
• - accessibility of blame
• may predict anger and aggression

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Causes of Anger and Aggression

• Personality Psychology
• Of OCEAN
• Agreeableness uniquely predicts aggression
• Disagreeable People cannot be trusted
• Agreeable I have a warm heart
• Why does A relate to aggression?
• Contrast of 2 models

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Agreeableness, Blame, and Anger

• Two Models
• Agreeableness
• Appraisal Model
• Blame Tendencies
• Regulation Model
• Anger
• Aggression

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Chronic Accessibility of Blame

• Bruner (1957)
• - The term accessibilitydenotes the ease or
  speed with which a given stimulus input is coded
  in terms of a given category.
• - if so, ask people to blame as quickly as
  possible

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Measuring Accessible Blame

• Blame Accessibility
• - choice reaction time
• - blame accessibility speed to categorize words
  as blameworthy
• Sin
• Malpractice
• crime

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Study 1 Details

• Study 1
• Measure accessibility agreeableness
• Predict anger throughout semester
• - anger angry, hostile, irritated, annoyed

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Study 1 Results

• Is agreeableness related to blame?
• - no r -.13, p .21
• Do agreeableness blame interact?
• - yes, as shown next

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Study 1 Results

• anger

Low Agreeable
High Agreeable
Fast Slow
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Study 1 Conclusions

• 1) agreeableness not related to blaming
• - Traits ? accessibility
• 2) Agreeableness not predictive of anger if no
  blame
• - Traits dont always matter
• 3) blame not predictive of anger if agreeable
• - Accessibility doesnt always matter
• 4) blame/anger relation
• - Straightforward among low agreeable
• - Disconnected among high agreeable

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Study 2 Questions

• Study 2 everyday anger and aggression
• - palm pilots 1 week
• - 35 random beeps
• - compliance 80
• What about antisocial actions?
• - are you arguing? yes or no

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Study 2 Results

• A/anger not for slow
• blame/anger not if agreeable
• A as inhibition

• anger

Low Agreeable
High Agreeable
Fast Slow
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Study 2 Results

• A/argue reverses for slow
• blame/argue not for agreeable
• A as inhibition

• arguing

Low Agreeable
High Agreeable
Fast Slow
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Agreeableness, Blame, and Anger

• Conclusions
• (1) Results not consistent with social cognitive
  perspective
• No correlation of agreeableness blame speed
• Agreeable people as skilled in assigning blame as
  non-agreeable people
• Therefore blame accessibility cannot explain why
  agreeable people are less aggressive

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Agreeableness, Blame, and Anger

• Conclusions
• (2) Consistent with regulation model
• Given same blame accessibility
• Those low in agreeableness
• Become angry
• Aggress
• Those high in agreeableness
• Dont become angry
• Dont aggress

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Agreeableness, Blame, and Anger

• Conclusions
• (3) Insights concerning categorization tendencies
• Not linked to traits
• Thus, new insights on personality
• (4) Insights concerning agreeableness
• Relates to regulation
• Blame accessibility anger disconnected among
  high agreeable folks

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Conclusions

• Agreeable people
• Anger is an island
• Its hard to get there
• Seemingly available paths are blocked
• Disagreeable people
• Anger is a continent
• Lots of available roads in good working order

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Offensive traits
• Machiavellianism
• Narcissism
• Psychopathy
• Are these the same thing?
• Antisocial thought behavior seems to relate to
  all

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Machiavellianism
• The manipulative aspect of personality
• Seek to manipulate others to own ends
• Narcissism
• Brittle, overly grandiose self-views
• Can become aggressive when criticized
• Psychopathy
• Impulsive, thrill-seeking
• Low empathy and low anxiety

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• What is shared among the dark triad?
• Self-promotion, self-interested behavior
• Socially irresponsible behavior
• Emotional coldness
• Duplicity, dishonesty
• Measures of all 3 tend to correlate
• Suggesting common basis in personality

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Present study
• Do they represent the same thing?
• 245 undergraduates
• Measures of narcissism, Machiavellianism,
  psychopathy
• Predictors
• Big 5 questionnaire
• Intelligence testing
• SR ratings of intelligence

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Self-enhancement bias
• Claiming knowledge that does not exist
• 90 persons, events, things
• 20 concern things that dont exist
• Claiming knowledge therefore represents
  self-enhancement bias
• Claiming knowledge that one does not have

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• results
• 1. Sex differences Males scored higher on all
  (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy)
• 2. Intercorrelations among triad

psychopathy
R .31
R .50
Machiavellianism
narcissism
R .25
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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Results
• 3. A correlated with all
• A narcissism, r -.36
• A Machiavellianism, r -.47
• A psychopathy, r -.25

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Results
• 4. However other big 5 differential correlations
• Psychopathy E, O, C-, N-
• Interestingly, correlated with everything
• Narcissism E, O
• Machiavellianism C-
• 5. Intelligence
• Correlated with narcissism, but not
  Machiavellianism or psychopathy

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Results
• 6. Self-enhancement bias
• Overclaiming self-knowledge
• Correlated with narcissism, not Machiavellianism
  or psychopathy
• Thus, self-enhancement bias unique to narcissism

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Conclusions
• 1. Seem to be distinct
• Inter-Correlations not extremely high
• Each has different external correlates
• 2. Big 5
• Only low A in common to all 3
• Other correlates not common to all
• 3. Self-enhancement bias
• Correlates with narcissism, not other 2 traits

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Conclusions
• 4. Who should you fear the most?
• Machiavellians
• Narcissists
• Psychopaths
• Why?

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Dark Triad of Personality (Paulhus Williams,
2002)

• Conclusions
• 4. Who should you fear the most?
• Psychopaths
• because low N
• There is a lack of inhibition in this respect
• As examined in a study by Patrick et al. (1994)..

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Psychopaths
• An emotional disorder?
• They know what gets them into trouble
• Lack aversive experience (that stops most of us)
  from doing
• Illegal
• Dishonest
• Reckless, impulsive behavior
• aggression

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Prior study involving SCRs
• Led to expect aversive shock
• People exhibit anticipatory SCRs
• Something bad is coming
• Psychopaths
• Smaller, less frequent SCRs
• Also later (closer to shock)

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Hypothesis
• People mentally simulate possible actions
• Such simulations trigger emotional imagery
• If action would be dangerous, anticipatory SCRs
• Normal people avoid such actions
• Psychopaths
• Lack anticipatory SCRs
• Therefore, simulations lack power to stop
  dangerous, impulsive behavior

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Subjects
• 54 Prisoners
• Some measured high in psychopathy
• Some did not
• How do psychopaths versus normals differ?

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Imagery scenarios
• Neutral
• E.g., I am relaxing on my couch looking out the
  window on a sunny autumn day
• Fearful
• E.g., Taking a shower, alone in the house, I
  hear the sound of someone forcing the door and I
  panic
• Imagine that you are in the scene
• Dependent measures
• A variety of physiological measures
• Also self-report ratings of unpleasantness,
  emotional arousal

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Results
• 1. Self-report
• Fear imagery leads to more unpleasant, high
  arousal feelings
• However, no differences by group
• 2. HR
• Higher during fearful imagery
• Also group differences
• Those high in primary psychopathy have lower HR
  increase to fear images

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Results
• 3. Skin conductance activity
• Marker of arousal
• Higher for fearful images
• Also group differences
• Those high in primary psychopathy did not exhibit
  same amplitudes to fearful images
• 4. Corrugator activity
• Measures unpleasantness on face
• Also group differences
• Same as above

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Results
• 4. Results, summary
• Fearful images
• Elicit unpleasant, high arousal self-reported
  feelings in both groups
• However, those higher in primary psychopathy
• Less HR increase
• Less skin conductance increase
• Less corrugator increase
• Less response physiologically

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Conclusions
• 1. Fearful images promote anticipatory
  physiological responses
• In HR
• Skin conductance
• Corrugator activity

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Emotion in Psychopaths (Patrick et al., 1994)

• Conclusions
• 2. Purpose of simulation
• To contemplate taking an action
• If action is dangerous, physiological stop
  signals
• 3. Those high in primary psychopathy missing
  these anticipatory signals
• May account for dangerous, impulsive actions
  aggression