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Attachment insecurity has been associated with dysfunctional strategies for emotion regulation, leading to inflexible or maladaptive responding. Currently, application of the attachment framework to anger is underspecified. This study presents a preliminary investigation of attachment-related differences in the dispositional regulation of anger and aggressive outcomes. Two hundred seventy participants completed measures of adult attachment (attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance), anger regulation processes (anger suppression, unregulated anger, and anger control), and aggressive outcomes (physical aggression, verbal aggression, and hostility). While those high in attachment anxiety have been found to under-regulate other negative emotions, our results postulate that these individuals may implement a suppression strategy when faced with the experience of anger. Mediation models indicate that anger suppression is implicated in the relationship between attachment dimensions and hostility but not physical aggression. This supports the notion that suppression may be useful in reducing the external expression of anger but cannot alleviate the associated internal cognitions. These findings suggest that levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance should be considered when identifying techniques to target specific anger regulatory difficulties that contribute to increased aggression. Further, consideration and exploration of the role of security priming is encouraged as a possible mechanism by which to reduce dispositional hostility in those with high levels of attachment insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of sport in determining attitudes and behavior in intergroup situations. The purpose is to suggest that participation in highly competitive sport encourages strong identification of fans with teams, which has important psychological implications for individuals and may foster negative sentiments toward outgroups. Manifestations of group consciousness in sport and the levels of antipathy described by Allport (1958) are discussed. Theories of conflict, categorization, and social com- petition form the basis of a discussion of some determinants of identification with sport teams, and implications for the physical education profession are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this meta-analysis is to explore relations between children's perceptions of parental hostility/aggression, and their psychological maladjustment, and negative personality dispositions as postulated in interpersonal acceptance and rejection theory. The meta-analysis was based on 35 studies from 16 countries in four continents involving 13,406 children (52% boys and 48% girls). All studies included in the meta-analysis, used child versions of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire for Mothers and for Fathers (Child PARQ: Mothers and Fathers), as well as the child version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire (Child PAQ). Results showed that both maternal and paternal hostility/aggression correlated significantly with the psychological maladjustment and with all seven negative personality dispositions, including (1) hostility/aggression, (2) dependence or defensive independence, (3) negative self-esteem, (4) negative self-adequacy, (5) emotional instability, (6) emotional unresponsiveness, and (7) negative worldview of children across ethnicities, cultures, and geographical boundaries. Results further revealed that perceived maternal than paternal hostility/aggression has significantly stronger relations with children's psychological maladjustment globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To assess psychological maladjustment in adolescents with functional constipation.Study Design: We conducted a cross-sectional survey in five schools. Adolescents aged between 13 and 18 years were included in the study. Validated questionnaires were used to collect bowel habits and demographic data, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and psychological maladjustment. Rome III criteria were used to diagnose constipation.Results: 1697 adolescents were recruited (boys 779 (45.9%), mean age 15.06 years and SD 1.6 years). Prevalence of constipation was 6.7%, of whom 52 were boys (45.6%) and 62 were girls (54.4%). 38 adolescents (33.3%) with constipation and 230 controls (14.5%) had significant psychological maladjustment. Among seven different personality dimensions used to assess psychological maladjustment, children with constipation had significantly more deficits than controls in hostility and aggression (14.2 vs 12.6 in controls (mean difference 1.54, 95% CI (0.89 to 2.19) p<0.001), negative self-esteem (12.0 vs 10.5 in controls, mean difference 1.54 95% CI (0.96 to 2.06) p<0.001), negative self-adequacy (11.9 vs 9.8 controls, mean difference 2.07 95% CI (1.46 to 2.67) p<0.001), emotional unresponsiveness (12.9 vs 11.5 controls, mean difference 1.44 95% CI (0.84 to 2.04) p<0.001), emotional instability (17.1 vs 15.6, mean difference 1.53 95% CI (0.86 to 2.2) p<0.001) and negative world view (12.1 vs 10.2 controls, mean difference 1.91 95% CI (1.24 to 2.59) p<0.001). The total HRQoL of adolescents with constipation was lower than controls (70.6 vs 79.0 mean difference 9.48 95% CI (1.4 to 6.7) p<0.05).Conclusion: A significant proportion of children with constipation are suffering from psychological maladjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the current study is to clarify the relationship between social information processing (e.g., visual attention to cues of hostility, hostility attribution bias, and facial expression emotion labeling) and aggressive tendencies. Thirty adults were recruited in the eye-tracking study that measured various components in social information processing. Baseline aggressive tendencies were measured using the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AQ). Visual attention towards hostile objects was measured as the proportion of eye gaze fixation duration on cues of hostility. Hostility attribution bias was measured with the rating results for emotions of characters in the images. The results show that the eye gaze duration on hostile characters was significantly inversely correlated with the AQ score and less eye contact with an angry face. The eye gaze duration on hostile object was not significantly associated with hostility attribution bias, although hostility attribution bias was significantly positively associated with the AQ score. Our findings suggest that eye gaze fixation time towards non-hostile cues may predict aggressive tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The measurement of aggression in its different forms (e.g., physical and verbal) and functions (e.g., impulsive and instrumental) is given little attention in subjects with developmental disabilities (DD). In this study, we confirm the factor structure of the Children's Scale for Hostility and Aggression: Reactive/Proactive (C-SHARP) and demonstrate measurement invariance (consistent performance across clinical groups) between clinic-referred groups with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We also provide evidence of the construct validity of the C-SHARP.Methods: Caregivers provided C-SHARP, Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and Proactive/Reactive Rating Scale (PRRS) ratings for 644 children, adolescents, and young adults 2-21 years of age. Five types of measurement invariance were evaluated within a confirmatory factor analytic framework. Associations among the C-SHARP, CBCL, and PRRS were explored.Results: The factor structure of the C-SHARP had a good fit to the data from both groups, and strict measurement invariance between ASD and non-ASD groups was demonstrated (i.e., equivalent structure, factor loadings, item intercepts and residuals, and latent variance/covariance between groups). The C-SHARP Problem Scale was more strongly associated with CBCL Externalizing than with CBCL Internalizing, supporting its construct validity. Subjects classified with the PRRS as both Reactive and Proactive had significantly higher C-SHARP Proactive Scores than those classified as Reactive only, who were rated significantly higher than those classified by the PRRS as Neither Reactive nor Proactive. A similar pattern was observed for the C-SHARP Reactive Score.Conclusions: This study provided evidence of the validity of the C-SHARP through confirmation of its factor structure and its relationship with more established scales. The demonstration of measurement invariance demonstrates that differences in C-SHARP factor scores were the result of differences in the construct rather than to error or unmeasured/nuisance variables. These data suggest that the C-SHARP is useful for quantifying subtypes of aggressive behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults with DD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the interactive effects of injunctive norm exposure and hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes on men's sexually aggressive responses during a behavioral analogue paradigm in which they interacted online with a bogus female partner. Heterosexual adult men (n = 201), recruited from an online sample, read fictional information regarding other men's approval of misogynistic, paternalistic, or egalitarian treatment of women, or non-gender-relevant control information. Through a media preference survey, men then learned that their female partner disliked sexual content in films, after which they had an opportunity to send her up to 120 sec' worth of either a sexually explicit or nonsexual film clip. Validating the online sexual aggression paradigm, men with a 1-year history of sexual assault exhibited more sexually aggressive responding during the film selection paradigm. Moreover, exposure to injunctive norm information produced a boomerang effect, such that men high in hostile sexist attitudes showed an increase in sexual aggression when confronted with paternalism and gender equality norms. Conversely, exposure to paternalism and gender equality norms suppressed the otherwise protective function of high benevolent sexism in reducing men's sexually aggressive tendencies. The implications of these results for social norms interventions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrative cognitive model, according to which individual differences in 3 cognitive processes jointly contribute to a person's level of trait anger and reactive aggression. An automatic tendency to attribute hostile traits to others is the first of these cognitive processes, and this process is proposed to be responsible for the more frequent elicitation of anger, particularly when hostile intent is ambiguous. Rumination on hostile thoughts is the second cognitive process proposed, which is likely to be responsible for prolonging and intensifying angry emotional states. The authors finally propose that low trait anger individuals use effortful control resources to self-regulate the influence of their hostile thoughts, whereas those high in trait anger do not. A particular emphasis of this review is implicit cognitive sources of evidence for the proposed mechanisms. The authors conclude with a discussion of important future directions, including how the proposed model can be further verified, broadened to take into account motivational factors, and applied to help understand anger-related social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined predictors and outcomes of women's hostility toward other women. Based on a projection model, we hypothesized and tested the theory via structural equation modeling that women's sense of personal inadequacy, the tendency to stereotype, and general anger would predict hostility toward women, and hostility toward women would predict blaming victims of violence and poor relationships with a female friend. Participants were 464 college women with an average age of 28.08. All measures were pencil and paper. Women's hostility toward women served as an intervening variable between a personal sense of inadequacy, tendency to stereotype, blaming women victims of violence, and intimacy with one's best female friend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A randomized, controlled trial compared writing about emotional topics (EMO) to writing about goals as the “best possible self” (BPS; after King, 2001 ) and evaluated emotional approach coping, i.e., efforts to cope through processing and expressing emotion, as a moderator of writing effects on psychological and physical health in 64 third-year medical students. In participants with higher baseline hostility, the EMO condition was associated with less hostility at 3 months compared to the BPS and control conditions. Emotional processing (EP) and emotional expression (EE) moderated the effect of experimental condition on depressive symptoms at 3 months; high EP/EE participants reported fewer depressive symptoms in the EMO condition, whereas low EP/EE individuals reported fewer depressive symptoms in the BPS condition compared to the EMO and control conditions. A moderating effect of EP on physical health was also identified, such that low EP individuals who wrote about goals (BPS) had fewer health care visits at 3 months compared to low EP participants in the EMO and control conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution offers a new approach to explain the hostile attitude of the biblical sources towards Edom. It is suggested that the relations between Edom and Israel are influenced by the way in which Israel perceived the meaning of the struggle between their fathers—Esau and Jacob. The constant conflict between Edom and Judah may well have been connected by the inhabitants of Judah, consciously or subconsciously, with the conflict between Esau and Jacob over the birthright, and over the control of the promised land. Edom's aspirations to occupy areas in Israel may have been interpreted as Edom's wish to reverse the situation and to restore the election and the birthright to Esau. Following the events in Judah of 587 BCE the people were in despair because they assumed that God had cast off his people forever. They interpreted the destruction of the temple and the expulsion from their land as severance of the relationship between God and his people. The people's exile because of their sins could also be interpreted as the people's loss of their status as the chosen people. Two facts supported their thoughts that they were rejected and Edom was now chosen by God. The first was the Edomite participation in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the expulsion of Judah from their country. And the second was the colonization of the land of Judah by the Edomites. It was not Edom's participation in the destruction or even in the colonization of Judah that led to the exceptional attitude towards Edom in the Biblical sources. The ideological and theological significance that Judah assigned to Edom's acts is what led the prophets to focus on Edom. The anti-Edomite oracles were meant to instil into the hearts of the people that, despite the destruction, Israel is still the chosen people and the sins of Edom against Judah would not remain unpunished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gottschalk–Gleser hostility scale and Rogan and Hammer's message affect were tested as indicators of emotionality in crisis negotiation. Both measures are supposed to be sensitive to changes in emotionality and to differentiate between phases of escalation and de-escalation. To validate this supposition, three hypotheses were tested, stating that (1) the overall level of emotionality should be higher for a hostage taker as compared to a negotiator; (2) for both protagonists the level of emotionality should be higher in escalating phases than in de-escalating phases; and (3) the change from de-escalating to escalating phases should be more pronounced for a hostage taker than for a negotiator. Seventeen phone calls from an authentic hostage taking, classified as escalating (10) and de-escalating (7), were analysed with both measures to test these hypotheses. Significant main effects and interactions were identified in this case study, supporting our hypotheses. Results are discussed against the background of the present research conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis that trait anger is associated with an increased tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as anger-provoking was investigated in a reading time study. A total of 48 healthy volunteers read a series of short narrative passages and were asked to adopt the perspective of the main character, identified at the start of each passage. Reading times for key sentences, which described the main characters' angry or nonangry reactions to ambiguous anger-provoking situations, were recorded. Trait anger and impulsivity were negatively correlated with reading time for sentences describing both types of reaction, but anger was also correlated with relatively faster processing of sentences describing angry reactions. This study suggests that those with angrier dispositions are more likely to anticipate angry reactions from others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) A General Theory of Crime, argues individual criminal propensity manifests itself as a general tendency to engage in a variety of criminal and delinquent acts. In contrast, Psychological explanations of aggression assume that the causal processes explaining individual variation in aggression are somehow different from those explaining other forms of crime and deviance. The current work assessed the relative strength of the assumptions of these two positions by testing the relationships among hostile attributional bias, self control, and three indicators of criminal intent. Hostile attributional bias is an individual characteristic important in psychological research on social information processing models of aggression. As defined by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), self-control represents a general tendency towards a variety of criminal and delinquent acts. Results support the assumptions of both general theories and act-specific explanations of aggression. When demographic control variables and self-control are accounted for, hostile attributional bias is uniquely associated with aggressive intent. However, when compared to hostile attributional bias, self-control explains a larger amount of variation in all intent measures including aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The killing of thirteen Arabs by Israeli police forces in October 2000 points to the mounting tension and hostility between Arabs and Jews in Israel. Encounter and coexistence programs constitute one of the few channels for the development of communication, trust, and genuine understanding of the complex Arab-Jewish reality in Israel. Thus, it is essential that these encounters be examined and professionally developed to respond to the needs of the two communities. This article examines certain shortcomings of these encounter programs and provides suggestions to improve their efficacy. The conclusions are based on an earlier empirical study conducted between 1992 and 1998, which investigated six encounter programs, and on a series of interviews with Arab-Jewish facilitators conducted in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Half of the subjects, college students, were insulted by the experimenter while half were not. Within each of these conditions, half of the subjects were led to believe they would have an opportunity to administer electric shock to the experimenter, while the other half were not. A measure of hostility toward the experimenter was taken before there was any actual opportunity to shock him. As predicted from reactance theory, it was found that the mere opportunity to shock the experimenter reduced hostility that was produced by his insulting behavior. Alternative interpretations and implications were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the viability of Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ) in evaluating punitiveness through adequate normative data. Results indicated that the principal component structure of the HDHQ is at variance with the dimensions of extrapunitiveness and intropunitiveness. It is proposed hat an oblique factor analytic solution would fit better with the conceptual genesis of the questionnaire. The manual of HDHQ gives an insufficient standardization data for normal subjects.

To discover why parasuicides who resolved their difficulties repeated self-harm within three-month follow-up at the same rate as those who had not resolved problems, a group of 30 repeaters was compared with 156 non-repeaters. The repeaters had a history of more frequent episodes, beginning younger. Their problems were more severe, the acts of self-harm potentially less lethal. They experienced greater feelings of externally directed hostility, powerlessness, and 'normlessness'. A constellation of nine variables correctly predicted 81.5% of the repeaters and 77.5% of the non-repeaters. At follow-up the non-repeaters had improved on several parameters but the repeaters were essentially unchanged. The resolvers among the subgroup of repeaters were more like repeaters in the overall sample than the resolvers, which may explain why some parasuicides repeat in spite of resolving their problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effects of similarity and guilt on the projection of hostility. Despite the studies of H.A. Murray and S. Feshbach and R.D. Singer, many of the parameters underlying "projection", or the attribution of traits and affects to others, are still relatively unexplored. The experiment is designed to investigate how attribution to others is affected by the presence or absence of guilt feelings in the perceiver and the similarity or dissimilarity of a bystander, not associated with the aggressive act, to the perceiver. Rationalized projection takes place without the presence of strong defensive activities. The functional value of such projection lies in mitigating for the individual the presence of certain self negative characteristics by making the person seemingly no different from anyone else and by removing the affect far from the ego.

The article discusses a study about the expression of hostile motivation in both imaginative and overt behavior, using the goal gradient formulation as a source of hypotheses. Subjects included in the study were permitted to express hostility in fantasy and in overt behavior, in a situation in which subjects could actually hurt another person. Two alternative theoretical models based on Miller and Dollard's goal gradient formulation were recommended. Low Expressors grew in hostile expression as arousal conditions increased, while High Expressors declined in hostility under the same circumstances.

This article discusses the hostile behaviour. Hostility is a normal manifestation of human behavior. Its consideration as a disease represents a study of aberrations from a clinical norm. This implies that one can establish a cultural norm of hostile behavior, and measure, however roughly, deviations from it. This is the same basic assumption in all psychological studies of personality, the ability to measure deviations from typical modes of feeling, thinking, and acting. The individual who releases hostile impulses, whether in the form of verbal or muscular attack, immediately sets into operation a chain of events that represent ways of modifying the attack, and of protecting himself from their real or assumed consequences. In the experimental situation, the child shows clearly the operation of the dynamics of hostility in every phase of the act. One may see, first, a battle with the impulse. The child may try to prevent its release by going into a distracting kind of play, so that the object he wishes to attack is thrown out of focus. He may deny any knowledge of what he wishes to do. He may state his wishes, and, at the same time, his inability to do anything about them.

The article focuses on the Taylor MAS and group conformity pressure. The study attempts to examine the amount of hostility and conformity of the subjects with high scores in Taylor anxiety scores as pressure increases. It hypothesizes that when group pressure is severe, subjects low in Taylor anxiety should give significantly more yielding responses than the subjects high in Taylor anxiety. The section investigated 12 highest and 12 lowest scorers on the shortened 28-items Taylor MAS, which were selected from a total of 160 undergraduate students as subjects for this experiment.