Seeing more than others: identification of subtle aggressive information as a function of trait aggressiveness

Researchers have long argued that aggressive individuals automatically tend to perceive hostile intent in others, even when it is in fact absent (hostile attribution bias). Wilkowski and Robinson (2012) recently showed, however, that aggressive individuals were particularly accurate in the identifi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Teige-Mocigemba, Sarah (Author)
Contributors: Hölzenbein, Fabian ; Klauer, Karl Christoph
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2016
In: Social psychology
Year: 2016, Volume: 47, Issue: 3, Pages: 135-149
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Keywords:
Aggressive information
Emotion identification
Hostile attribution bias
Perceptual sensitivity
Description
Summary:Researchers have long argued that aggressive individuals automatically tend to perceive hostile intent in others, even when it is in fact absent (hostile attribution bias). Wilkowski and Robinson (2012) recently showed, however, that aggressive individuals were particularly accurate in the identification of subtle cues of facial anger, indicating greater perceptual sensitivity to anger information rather than a biased perception or interpretation. We tested the generality of this finding in four paradigms with different stimuli. As predicted by Wilkowski and Robinson, the more aggressive participants were, the more accurately they identified subtle aggressive information, whereas accuracy in the identification of nonaggressive emotional information was not a function of self-reported aggressiveness. The discussion focuses on the generality and limitations of the findings.
ISSN:2151-2590
DOI:10.1027/1864-9335/a000266