Twelve weeks of self-control training does not reduce aggression

Clarifying the relationship between trait aggression and self-control using random item slope regression

OBJECTIVE

Myriad psychological research evinces a negative association between self-control and aggression with some arguing for self-control failure as a cause of aggression. Recent literature suggests that the relationship between aggression and self-control is likely more complex and even positive in some cases. One source of such conflict in the literature could be the presence of unaccounted for random item slopes in commonly used measures of self-control which may inflate the likelihood of Type I errors. This study (N = 1386) tested the hypothesis that self-control would share random item slopes with the facets of trait aggression using random item slope regression.

METHOD

We measured trait aggression and self-control via two common self-reports: the Buss-Perry Questionnaire and the Brief Self-Control Scale.

RESULTS

Our analyses revealed that the facets of trait aggression shared significant random item slopes with self-control and that many of these slopes were positive, rather than negative. We also found that Type I error inflation was evident in models that did not account for these random slopes.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings may in part explain some of the conflicting results in the literature and that researchers interested in studying self-control and aggression should test for random item slopes.

Superior temporal gyrus activation modulates revenge-like aggressive response tendencies in antisocial men after provocation: Evidence from an fMRI study using a modified Taylor aggression paradigm

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is characterized by a disregard of others' feelings, social norms, rules and obligations as well as increased reactive and proactive aggression among others. Experimental investigations of neural correlates of provocation and associated aggression often use competitive reaction time tasks played against a fictional opponent, such as the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP). However, previous TAP neuroimaging research mainly focused on aggression levels in healthy and not forensic populations. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study on monetary TAP (mTAP) provocation and aggression assesses 20 violent offenders with ASPD and compares behavioral and neural responses to 17 age and education-matched healthy community participants (HC). Behaviorally, no significant group differences emerged, all participants reacted with increased punishment when faced with high vs. low provocation. On the neural level, offenders showed significantly stronger right superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation than HC during provocation. Exploratory analyses indicated that this STG activation was behaviorally relevant, as those with ASPD who expressed stronger STG activation during provocation also responded with stronger unprovoked punishment during the aggression phase. In addition, during the aggression phase, provocation was accompanied by increased left superior parietal lobe activation in ASPD compared to HC. In sum, this first mTAP fMRI study in ASPD found enhanced neural processing of provocation in ASPD which was also associated with more unprovoked aggression. The increased neural processing of provocation in ASPD and its association with subsequent higher aggression could have clinical relevance. At least, cognitive processing of perceived provocation could be a worthwhile intervention target for reducing aggressive response tendencies.

Transforming aggression into creativity: Creative thinking training as a new strategy for aggression intervention

Although reducing students' aggressive behaviors and improving their creativity are both important commitments of educators, they are usually treated independently as unrelated tasks. However, cumulative evidence suggests potential links between aggression and creativity, not only from the perspectives of personality traits and psychological development, but also from their shared cognitive mechanisms. This implies that there may be an approach to achieving these two goals through a single intervention. Moreover, this new approach may overcome the limitation of the usually adopted aggression intervention, which is limited in its regulatory effectiveness and might bring about some disadvantageous impacts on creativity that are closely associated with aggression. To test this possibility, the present study implemented a four-session, 2-week creative thinking training (CTT) intervention for students with high aggression scores to examine whether it could simultaneously downregulate aggression and increase creativity. Our results demonstrate that, compared to the control group, the intervention group experienced significant improvements in creativity and a reduction in aggression following the CTT intervention. Furthermore, our findings suggest that this regulatory effect can persist for up to 6 months. The CTT-induced creativity change (increase) could significantly correlate with and predict the CTT-induced aggression decrease, thus suggesting that the CTT could transform aggression into creativity.