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ABSTRACT: Anger is an emotion that is precipitated by hostile attitudes and high arousal. The trait of agreeableness is
a moderately inverse predictor of hostile attitudes and anger. Relations between agreeableness and anger
are likely to be stronger to the extent that the person can be characterized as high in dispositional arousal.
Arousal-related manipulations speed responses in cognitive tasks. Thus, individual differences in
response speed may be informative concerning general tendencies toward aroused states. In three studies
(N = 319) individual differences in response speed in basic choice tasks interacted with agreeableness
to predict state-related experiences of anger. Specifically, the highest levels of anger were observed
among fast/disagreeable individuals. The utility of this probe in future studies is discussed.
Journal of Research in Personality 02/2012; 46:79-86. · 2.00 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Previous research has suggested that aggressive individuals exhibit a bias to perceive nonangry expressions as angry. Another line of thinking, however, posits that aggression is a learned response to hostile environments and should be linked to social-cognitive skills suited to such environments. If so, aggressive individuals may exhibit greater perceptual sensitivity to subtle facial cues of anger. Three studies were conducted to test this proposal. In them, participants' ability to discriminate between subtly different intensities of facial anger was tested. Aggressive participants generally displayed greater perceptual sensitivity to subtle cues of facial anger. This pattern could not be explained in terms of response bias and was specific to angry expressions. The results thus support the idea that aggression is associated with social-cognitive skills rather than bias and ineptitude.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 01/2012; 38(4):540-53. · 2.22 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A basic premise of the recently proffered color-in-context model is that the influence of color on psychological functioning varies as a function of the psychological context in which color is perceived. Some research has examined the appetitive and aversive implications of viewing the color red in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts, respectively, but in all existing empirical work approach and avoidance behavior has been studied in separate tasks and separate experiments. Research is needed to directly test whether red influences the same behavior differently depending entirely on psychological context.
The present experiment was designed to put this premise to direct test in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts within the same experimental paradigm involving walking behavior. Our results revealed that exposure to red (but not blue) indeed has differential implications for walking behavior as a function of the context in which the color is perceived. Red increased the speed with which participants walked to an ostensible interview about dating (a romance-relevant context), but decreased the speed with which they walked to an ostensible interview about intelligence (an achievement-relevant context).
These results are the first direct evidence that the influence of red on psychological functioning in humans varies by psychological context. Our findings contribute to both the literature on color psychology and the broader, emerging literature on the influence of context on basic psychological processes.
PLoS ONE 01/2012; 7(7):e40333. · 4.09 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Interpersonally cold (relative to warm) individuals may be less skilled in inferring the emotional states of others, a factor that should contribute to their poorer social relationships. Systematic support for this hypothesis was obtained in 4 studies (total N = 434 undergraduates) involving diverse emotion- and affect-decoding tasks. Specifically, relatively cold individuals exhibited lower accuracy in decoding emotional facial expressions (Study 1), in labeling the emotions of others from audio and video clips (Study 2), in predicting the emotions of others from social scenario descriptions (Study 3), and in the normative accuracy of their word evaluations (Study 4). Altogether, the results demonstrate that cold individuals appear broadly deficient in linking emotion and affect to relevant environmental stimuli. Implications of the findings for understanding the nature and correlates of interpersonal coldness are discussed.
Journal of Personality 07/2011; 80(3):703-24. · 2.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Low-anger individuals are less reactive, both emotionally and behaviourally, to a large variety of situational primes to anger and aggression. Why this is so, from an affective processing perspective, has been largely conjectural. Four studies (total N=270) sought to link individual differences in anger to tendencies exhibited in basic affective processing tasks. On the basis of motivational factors and considerations, it was hypothesised that negative evaluations would differentially activate a psychological alarm system at low levels of anger, resulting in a pause that should be evident in the speed of making subsequent evaluations. Just such a pattern was evident in all studies. By contrast, high-anger individuals did not pause following their negative evaluations. In relation to this affective processing tendency, at least, dramatically different effects were observed among low- versus high-anger individuals. Implications for the personality-processing literature, theories of trait anger, and fast-acting regulatory processes are discussed.
Cognition and Emotion 05/2011; 26(2):261-81. · 2.52 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: It is well-established that superior cognitive control abilities are associated with lower levels of anger and aggression. However, the precise emotion regulation operations underlying this relationship have been underspecified and underexplored in previous research. Drawing on neuropsychological models of cognitive control, the authors propose that limited capacity resources can be recruited within a hostile situation to promote a process of forgiveness. The results of 2 studies supported this proposal. Across studies, individual differences in hostility-primed cognitive control were assessed implicitly. In Study 1, hostility-primed cognitive control predicted less aggressive behavior in response to a laboratory provocation. Moreover, forgiveness mediated these effects. In Study 2, hostility-primed cognitive control predicted forgiveness of provocations in participants' daily lives and subsequent reductions in anger. In sum, the results contribute to a systematic understanding of how cognitive control leads to lower levels of anger and aggression.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 05/2010; 98(5):830-40. · 5.08 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: There has been a great deal of debate concerning the antecedents of anger, with appraisal theorists emphasizing the role of hostile interpretations and cognitive neo-associationistic theorists emphasizing the role of more basic associative processes. Recently, theorists have sought to reconcile these views by acknowledging the role of both associative and inferential processes, and the current investigation drew upon recent social-cognitive research to test this compromise. Individual differences in hostile inferences and associations were assessed in an implicit cognitive paradigm, and relevant outcomes were assessed in a daily diary protocol. Implicit hostile inferences predicted both anger and aggression in daily life, and such relationships were mediated by propensities toward hostile interpretations in daily life. Hostile associations also predicted anger in daily life, but this relationship proved to be independent of daily hostile interpretations. Results therefore support a model that acknowledges the role of both associative and appraisal processes in anger elicitation.
Emotion 04/2010; 10(2):181-9. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The situational factors precipitating anger and reactive (i.e., emotional) aggression have been well documented in the social psychology literature. However, there are pronounced individual differences in reactivity to hostile cues that are equally important in understanding such outcomes. Indeed, in predicting tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression, it appears critical to simultaneously consider both individual difference and situational factors. This case is first made. Subsequently, the utility of this individual difference realm in understanding wider personality processes related to social cognition, reactivity, and self-regulation is highlighted. Individual difference frameworks of this type are scattered across multiple literatures. For this reason, the present special section of the Journal of Personality invited contributions from experts in developmental, social, cognitive, trait, and biological subdisciplines of psychology. The final section introduces the invited papers and makes a brief case for broader process-related conclusions that are generally apparent.
Journal of Personality 02/2010; 78(1):1-8. · 2.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: 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.
Journal of Personality 02/2010; 78(1):9-38. · 2.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Although many psychological models suggest that human beings are invariably motivated to avoid negative stimuli, more recent theories suggest that people are frequently motivated to approach angering social challenges in order to confront and overcome them. To examine these models, the current investigation sought to determine whether angry facial expressions potentiate approach-motivated motor behaviors. Across 3 studies, individuals were faster to initiate approach movements toward angry facial expressions than to initiate avoidance movements away from such facial expressions. This approach advantage differed significantly from participants' responses to both emotionally neutral (Studies 1 & 3) and fearful (Study 2) facial expressions. Furthermore, this pattern was most apparent when physical approach appeared to be effective in overcoming the social challenge posed by angry facial expressions (Study 3). The results are discussed in terms of the processes underlying anger-related approach motivation and the conditions under which they are likely to arise.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 02/2010; 98(2):201-10. · 5.08 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Anger is frequently referred to in terms of heat-related metaphors (e.g., hot-headed). The metaphoric representation perspective contends that such metaphors are not simply a poetic means of expressing anger but actually reflect the manner in which the concept of anger is cognitively represented. Drawing upon this perspective, the present studies examined the idea that the cognitive representation of anger is systematically related to the cognitive representation of heat. A total of 7 studies, involving 438 participants, provided support for this view. Visual depictions of heat facilitated the use of anger-related conceptual knowledge, and this occurred in tasks involving lexical stimuli as well as facial expressions. Furthermore, priming anger-related thoughts led participants to judge unfamiliar cities and the actual room temperature as hotter in nature. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for embodied views of emotion concepts and their potential social consequences.
Emotion 09/2009; 9(4):464-77. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Social-psychological theories of belongingness self-regulation suggest that when one's need for interpersonal relationships is not being met, one begins to monitor the social environment more closely. Presumably, this serves to increase awareness of the likelihood of social acceptance versus rejection and to inform later social decision- making processes. The current investigation tested whether low belongingness increases a particular form of social monitoring that has recently been documented in the cognitive literature: gaze-triggered orienting. Low belongingness was operationalized either in terms of low trait self-esteem(Studies 1a and 1b) or in terms of the priming of rejection-related thoughts (Study 2). Across the studies, the normal tendency to orient attention in accordance with another individual's eye gaze was augmented under conditions of low belongingness. However, belongingness had no influence on a nonsocial form of orienting. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of belongingness self-regulation and social attention.
Psychological Science 05/2009; 20(4):495-501. · 4.43 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Approach motivation consists of the active, engaged pursuit of one's goals. The purpose of the present three studies (N = 258) was to examine whether approach motivation could be cognitively modeled, thereby providing process-based insights into personality functioning. Behavioral facilitation was assessed in terms of faster (or facilitated) reaction time with practice. As hypothesized, such tendencies predicted higher levels of approach motivation, higher levels of positive affect, and lower levels of depressive symptoms and did so across cognitive, behavioral, self-reported, and peer-reported outcomes. Tendencies toward behavioral facilitation, on the other hand, did not correlate with self-reported traits (Study 1) and did not predict avoidance motivation or negative affect (all studies). The results indicate a systematic relationship between behavioral facilitation in cognitive tasks and approach motivation in daily life. Results are discussed in terms of the benefits of modeling the cognitive processes hypothesized to underlie individual differences motivation, affect, and depression.
Emotion 03/2009; 9(1):70-82. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Trait anger is a robust predictor of the angry and aggressive response to hostile situational input, but it is important to better understand the mechanisms underlying this dimension of personality. The present two studies (total N=106) examined the possibility that individuals low in trait anger systematically recruit cognitive control resources within hostile contexts. These resources would likely be useful in facilitating emotion regulation operations. In support of this cognitive control framework, Experiment 1 found that low (but not high) trait anger individuals exhibited superior response-switching abilities in a hostile stimulus context. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated this pattern using a different cognitive control measure related to flanker interference effects. The convergence of findings across studies provides one likely mechanism for the reduced levels of reactivity at low levels of trait anger. Findings are discussed in relation to broader theories of trait anger and emotion regulation.
Emotion 09/2008; 8(4):578-83. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The study followed from the idea that neuroticism captures hot or facilitative vulnerabilities related to anger and aggression, whereas agreeableness captures cool or inhibitory processes in relation to these same outcomes. As such, it was predicted that neuroticism and agreeableness should interact to predict anger and aggression according to hot/cool models of self-regulation. This hypothesis was systematically examined among three independent samples of participants (total N = 176). As predicted, neuroticism and agreeableness interacted to predict anger and aggression among all samples, and did so in a manner consistent with the hypothesis that neuroticism-anger relations would be lower at high levels of agreeableness. The results therefore highlight the distinct roles of neuroticism and agreeableness in predicting anger and aggression, while placing these traits in a common interactive self-regulatory framework.
Journal of Research in Personality 05/2008; 42(2):295-311. · 2.00 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Cognitive processing approaches to personality have gained momentum in recent years, and the present review uses such a cognitive approach to understand individual differences in anger and reactive aggression. Because several relevant cognitive models have been proposed in separate literatures, a purpose of this review is to integrate such material and evaluate the consistency of relations obtained to date. The analysis reveals that processes related to automatic hostile interpretations, ruminative attention, and effortful control appear to be important contributors to individual differences in angry reactivity. Memory accessibility processes, by contrast, failed to exhibit a consistent relationship with trait anger. This review concludes with the proposal of an integrative cognitive model of trait anger and the discussion of several broader issues, including the developmental origins of cognitive processing patterns and plausible links to temperament-based perspectives.
Personality and Social Psychology Review 03/2008; 12(1):3-21. · 6.07 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Emotional clarity results in reduced anger, but it is important to better understand why this is true. Drawing upon existing cybernetic models of affect regulation, the authors propose that affect down-regulation operations are crucial to understanding the clarity/anger relationship. A two study, multi-method investigation provided support for these hypotheses. Study 1 used dispositional measures of emotional clarity, anger control, and trait anger, and found that anger control mediated the relationship between clarity and reduced anger. Study 2 found that individuals high in emotional clarity were successful in correcting for the influence of aggressive primes on subsequent evaluations. Importantly, though, disrupting these affect regulation operations through the imposition of cognitive load left emotionally clear individuals as susceptible to antisocial affect priming as emotionally unclear individuals. In total, the studies suggest that emotional clarity is closely associated with the effortful down-regulation of antisocial affect.
Cognition and Emotion 02/2008; 22(2):308-326. · 2.52 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A regulatory perspective on trait anger suggests that low-trait-anger individuals may recruit limited-capacity cognitive control resources following the activation of hostile thoughts. Because no prior studies directly examine such processes, the present studies seek to do so. Study 1 reveals that a simple word-evaluation paradigm can be used to examine individual differences in hostile reactivity, in that high-trait-anger individuals display more pronounced tendencies to evaluate words negatively following a hostile prime. Studies 2-4 examine a cognitive control account of such findings. Study 2 finds that time-limiting evaluations eliminate trait-linked differences in evaluative priming. Studies 3 and 4 find that low-trait-anger individuals display deficits on a secondary task immediately following the activation of a hostile thought. All studies, then, converge on the link between low trait anger and the spontaneous recruitment of limited-capacity cognitive control resources following hostile primes.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 10/2007; 33(9):1201-13. · 2.22 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The present hypotheses were guided by four premises, which were systematically examined in six studies involving 409 undergraduate participants. The first premise, established by prior work, is that trait neuroticism is closely associated with avoidance-related goals. The second premise, however, is that neuroticism may be uncorrelated with cognitive tendencies to recognize threats as they occur, and subsequently to down-regulate them. In support of this point, all six studies found that neuroticism was unrelated to post-error behavioral adjustments in choice reaction time. The third premise is that post-error reactivity would nonetheless predict individual differences in threat-recognition (Studies 1 and 2) and its apparent mitigation (Study 3), independently of trait neuroticism. These predictions were supported. The fourth premise is that individual differences in neuroticism and error-reactivity would interact with each other in predicting everyday experiences of distress. In support of such predictions, Studies 4-6 found that higher levels of error-reactivity were associated with less negative affect at high levels of neuroticism, but more negative affect at low levels of neuroticism. The findings are interpreted in terms of trait-cognition self-regulation principles.
Emotion 09/2007; 7(3):579-91. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Research reveals that aggressive primes activate hostile information in memory. However, it is unclear whether this is true of all people or whether the activation of hostile information differs by trait aggression. In 3 studies, we investigate the organization of aggression-related knowledge. In Study 1, ratings of one's hostile emotions speeded subsequent ratings of hostile emotions, but particularly among individuals low in trait aggression. In Study 2, categorizations of blame-related words speeded categorizations of anger-related words, but particularly among individuals low in trait aggression. In Study 3, categorizations of actions as mean facilitated similar categorizations, but particularly among individuals low in trait aggression. These results suggest that aggressive primes activate hostile information in memory particularly for individuals low (rather than high) in trait aggression. The discussion of the results attempts to reconcile spreading activation processes with judgment and behavior in the particular context of trait aggression and priming effects.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology 01/2007; 29(1):23-34. · 0.38 Impact Factor
