Trait Aggressiveness and Aggressive Behavior in the Context of Provocation and Inhibition

Aggressive behavior often occurs despite salient cues within the immediate environment that indicate aversive consequences will likely follow. Prior research has shown high trait aggressiveness to be related to sensitivity to situational provocation; however, little research has examined whether it is also related to insensitivity to situational inhibitors. This study examines the relationship between trait aggressiveness and aggressive behavior in a provocative context with, and without, an unambiguous inhibitory stimulus. Prior to experiencing provocation and being afforded the opportunity to retaliate, participants who varied in trait aggressiveness were explicitly given (or not given) an instruction that aggressive behavior might lead to aversive consequences and, thus, one should not behave aggressively. Findings revealed that without the instruction, those higher in trait aggressiveness exhibited steeper increases in aggressive responding as provocation increased. In the group that received the instruction, trait aggressiveness was unrelated to aggressive responding at all levels of provocation.     

Understanding impulsive aggression: Angry rumination and reduced self-control capacity are mechanisms underlying the provocation-aggression relationship

Interpersonal provocation is a common and robust antecedent to aggression. Four studies identified angry rumination and reduced self-control as mechanisms underlying the provocation-aggression relationship. Following provocation, participants demonstrated decreased self-control on an unpleasant task relative to a control condition (Study 1). When provoked, rumination reduced self-control and increased aggression. This effect was mediated by reduced self-control capacity (Study 2). State rumination following provocation, but not anger per se, mediated the effect of trait rumination on aggression (Study 3). Bolstering self-regulatory resources by consuming a glucose beverage improved performance on a measure of inhibitory control following rumination (Study 4). These findings suggest that rumination following an anger-inducing provocation reduces self-control and increases aggression. Bolstering self-regulatory resources may reduce this adverse effect.     

Self-control training decreases aggression in response to provocation in aggressive individuals

One common cause of aggression is self-control failure, yet research suggests that practicing self-control over time can improve subsequent self-control. This experiment tested whether self-control training over a 2-week period could decrease anger and aggression in response to provocation. Seventy undergraduates completed 2 weeks of self-control training or a control task. At the end of the 2 weeks, participants were insulted and given the opportunity to retaliate by delivering a blast of loud white noise. Self-control training reduced aggression among those high in trait aggression. Participants who received the training also reported less anger than those in the control condition. These results provide initial support that self-control training might prove beneficial for assisting aggressive individuals to overcome aggressive impulses.     

Taking a fresh perspective: Vicarious restoration as a means of recovering self-control

In the realm of self-regulation, recent work shows that the state of ego depletion can be vicariously transmitted from a target to a perceiver simply by imagining the perspective of a depleted target (i.e., vicarious depletion; Ackerman et al., 2009). The present study asked whether such vicarious effects can extend to the domain of self-regulatory recovery. In Experiment 1, depleted participants who took the perspective of someone engaging in a restorative activity showed recovered self-control on a later task. Experiments 2 and 3 expanded upon this effect by illustrating that such vicarious self-regulatory processes only emerge if the target is similar to the participant. Taken together, the present studies offer a powerful method by which mental resources can be replenished, and identify one critical boundary condition of its effectiveness.     

Understanding maladaptive responses to rejection: Aggression with an audience

Logically, responding aggressively to rejection is maladaptive because one is unlikely to seek a relationship with an aggressor. We predict that when concealed, the illogical aggressive response to rejection is more likely, whereas when the rejected individuals’ aggressive responses are perceived as public, the aggressive acts may be reduced. Participants were rejected by others (Experiment 1) or were either accepted or rejected during an online ball-tossing game (Experiment 2) and were then given an opportunity to aggress publicly or privately. Across experiments, when the opportunity to aggress was made public, rejected participants exhibited less aggressive behavior. When concerned about the perception of their public aggressive responses by others, rejected individuals’ aggressive responses diminished compared with those whose actions were private. Crucially, this extended to aggression visible only to neutral others, suggesting that effects cannot solely be due to fear of retribution.     

Exposure to nature counteracts aggression after depletion

Acts of self‐control are more likely to fail after previous exertion of self‐control, known as the ego depletion effect. Research has shown that depleted participants behave more aggressively than non‐depleted participants, especially after being provoked. Although exposure to nature (e.g., a walk in the park) has been predicted to replenish resources common to executive functioning and self‐control, the extent to which exposure to nature may counteract the depletion effect on aggression has yet to be determined. The present study investigated the effects of exposure to nature on aggression following depletion. Aggression was measured by the intensity of noise blasts participants delivered to an ostensible opponent in a competition reaction‐time task. As predicted, an interaction occurred between depletion and environmental manipulations for provoked aggression. Specifically, depleted participants behaved more aggressively in response to provocation than non‐depleted participants in the urban condition. However, provoked aggression did not differ between depleted and non‐depleted participants in the natural condition. Moreover, within the depletion condition, participants in the natural condition had lower levels of provoked aggression than participants in the urban condition. This study suggests that a brief period of nature exposure may restore self‐control and help depleted people regain control over aggressive urges.

     

Self-regulatory processes defend against the threat of death: Effects of self-control depletion and trait self-control on thoughts and fears of dying

Nine studies (N = 979) demonstrated that managing the threat of death requires self-regulation. Both trait and state self-control ability moderated the degree to which people experienced death-related thought and anxiety. Participants high (vs. low) in self-control generated fewer death-related thoughts after being primed with death, reported less death anxiety, were less likely to perceive death-related themes in ambiguous scenes, and reacted with less worldview defense when mortality was made salient. Further, coping with thoughts of death led to self-regulatory fatigue. After writing about death versus a control topic, participants performed worse on several measures of self-regulation that were irrelevant to death. These results suggest that self-regulation is a key intrapsychic mechanism for alleviating troublesome thoughts and feelings about mortality.     

Self-regulation and the extended now: controlling the self alters the subjective experience of time

These studies investigated self-regulation and subjective experience of time from the perspective of the regulatory resource model. Studies 1-2 showed that participants who were instructed to regulate their emotions while viewing a film clip perceived that the film lasted longer than participants who did not regulate their emotions. In Study 3, participants provided time estimates during a resource-depleting or nondepleting task. Subsequent task persistence was measured. Time perceptions mediated the effect of initial self-regulation on subsequent self-regulated performance. In Study 4, participants performed either a resource-depleting or a nondepleting thought-listing task and then performed a different regulatorytask. Compared with nondepleted participants, depleted participants persisted less on the 2nd task but estimated that they had persisted longer. Subjective time estimates statistically accounted for reduced persistence after depletion. Together, results indicate people believe that self-regulatory endeavors last overly long, a belief that may result in abandonment of further self-control.     

Adapting to an initial self-regulatory task cancels the ego depletion effect

The resource-based model of self-regulation provides a pessimistic view of self-regulation that people are destined to lose their self-control after having engaged in any act of self-regulation because these acts deplete the limited resource that people need for successful self-regulation. The cognitive control theory, however, offers an alternative explanation and suggests that the depletion effect reflects switch costs between different cognitive control processes recruited to deal with demanding tasks. This account implies that the depletion effect will not occur once people have had the opportunity to adapt to the self-regulatory task initially engaged in. Consistent with this idea, the present study showed that engaging in a demanding task led to performance deficits on a subsequent self-regulatory task (i.e. the depletion effect) only when the initial demanding task was relatively short but not when it was long enough for participants to adapt. Our results were unrelated to self-efficacy, mood, and motivation.     

Hungry for love: the influence of self-regulation on infidelity

The current research examines the effect of self-regulation on the likelihood of committing infidelity. Thirty-two college students in exclusive romantic relationships interacted through a private chat room with an opposite-sex confederate. Prior to this interaction, a food-restriction task depleted half the participants of self-control. As predicted, depleted levels of self-regulation increased the likelihood of infidelity. Specifically, depleted participants were more likely to both accept a coffee date from and supply a personal telephone number to the confederate than non-depleted participants. Weakened self-control may be one potential cause for the levels of infidelity occurring in romantic partnerships today.     

Self-regulatory failure: a resource-depletion approach

Three studies were conducted to test the behavioral consequences of effortful self-regulation. Individuals with chronic inhibitions about eating were exposed to situations varying in level of self-regulatory demand. Subsequently, participants' ability to self-regulate was measured. Two studies manipulated self-regulatory demand by exposing participants to good-tasting snack foods, whereas a third study required participants to control their emotional expressions. As hypothesized, exerting self-control during the first task led to decrements in self-control on a subsequent task. Moreover, these effects were not due to changes in affective state and occurred only when self-control was required in the first task. These findings are explained in terms of depletion of self-regulatory resources, which impairs successful volitional control.     

The Relationship Between Perspective-Taking and Nonaggressive Responding in the Face of an Attack

Perspective-taking functions as an inhibitor of interpersonal aggression and as a facilitator of prosocial behavior. The present study examined the extent to which perspective-taking enhances nonaggressive responses in a situation in which people typically make aggressive responses. It also examined the relationship between perspective-taking and response to interpersonal context. Subjects participated in a reaction-time task in which they could respond either aggressively or nonaggressively in two different interpersonal contexts (i.e., the target either increased or decreased provocation during the interaction). As predicted, perspective-taking was related to the inhibition of aggressive responding and the facilitation of nonaggressive responding. In general, perspective-taking was associated with less aggression, including relatively more positive and fewer negative responses. This was especially the case in the interpersonal context in which the target had increased provocation across the trials of the task.     

Implementation intentions and the willful pursuit of prosocial goals in negotiations

Three studies examined whether the self-regulation strategy of forming implementation intentions (i.e., if-then plans) facilitates the attainment of prosocial goals when a limited resource is to be distributed between two parties who hold adverse cognitive orientations. In three experiments, pairs of negotiators were assigned prosocial goals that either had to be supplemented with plans (if-then plans, Gollwitzer, 1999) on how to act on these goals or not. Experiment 1 used a mixed-frames negotiation paradigm in which one negotiation partner operated on a gain-frame, the other on a loss-frame. When participants had the prosocial goal to find fair agreements and furnished it with a respective if-then plan, unfair agreements in favor of the loss-frame negotiator no longer occurred. Experiment 2 used a same-frame negotiation paradigm, where both negotiation partners had either a loss or a gain-frame. When loss-frame pairs had furnished their prosocial goals to cooperate with the negotiation partner with a respective if-then plan, reduced profits as compared to gain-frame pairs of negotiators were no longer observed. In addition, negotiators who had formed implementation intentions were more likely to use the integrative negotiation strategy of logrolling (i.e., making greater concessions on low rather than high priority issues). Experiment 3 used a computer-mediated negotiation task in order to analyze the effects of prosocial goals and respective implementation intentions on the course of the negotiation. Again, implementation intentions facilitated the pursuit of prosocial goals in the face of adversity (i.e., loss frames) by use of the integrative negotiation strategy of logrolling. The present research adds a self-regulation perspective to the research on negotiation by pointing out that the effects of negotiation goals can be enhanced by furnishing them with respective plans (i.e., implementation intentions).     

Unable to resist temptation: How self-control depletion promotes unethical behavior

Across four experimental studies, individuals who were depleted of their self-regulatory resources by an initial act of self-control were more likely to “impulsively cheat” than individuals whose self-regulatory resources were intact. Our results demonstrate that individuals depleted of self-control resources were more likely to behave dishonestly (Study 1). Depletion reduced people’s moral awareness when they faced the opportunity to cheat, which, in turn, was responsible for heightened cheating (Study 2). Individuals high in moral identity, however, did not show elevated levels of cheating when they were depleted (Study 3), supporting our hypothesis that self-control depletion increases cheating when it robs people of the executive resources necessary to identify an act as immoral or unethical. Our results also show that resisting unethical behavior both requires and depletes self-control resources (Study 4). Taken together, our findings help to explain how otherwise ethical individuals predictably engage in unethical behavior.     

Self-regulation versus habit: the influence of self-schema on fruit and vegetable consumption

The aim of this study is to examine the determinants of fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption with the application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the additional variables of self-schema, habit and self-regulation. While it has been shown that those with a healthy-eater self-schema are more likely to carry out their healthy dietary intentions, the underlying processes that influence this relationship have received limited empirical attention. Recent findings on dietary behaviour suggest that self-regulatory ability and habit strength may have dissimilar effects on the intention-behaviour relationship within schematics and non-schematics. Self-report questionnaires regarding F&V consumption cognitions and two tests of self-regulation were administered to 209 university students. One week later, participants completed questionnaires on their behaviour. The TPB significantly predicted intentions and prospective behaviour. Self-schema did not moderate the relationship between intention and behaviour. However, within healthy-eater schematics, those with high intention and high self-regulatory ability were more likely to consume F&V, while within non-schematics, those with low intention and high habit strength were more likely to consume F&V. The findings support the use of the TPB in predicting F&V consumption and the validity of the self-schema distinction. Implications for designing interventions are discussed.     

Drinking without thinking: an implicit measure of alcohol motivation predicts failure to control alcohol use

Addiction is characterized by dyscontrol - substance use despite intentions to restrain. Using a sample of at-risk drinkers, the present study examined whether an implicit measure of alcohol motivation (the Implicit Association Test [IAT]; Greenwald, A.G., McGhee, D.E., & Schwartz, J.L.K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480) would predict dyscontrol of alcohol use. Participants completed an IAT and, to elicit motivation to restrain alcohol use, were instructed that greater consumption in a taste test would impair performance on a later task for which they could win a prize. All participants viewed aversive slides and then completed a thought-listing task. Participants either exerted self-control by suppressing negative affect and thoughts regarding the slides or did not exert self-control. Post-manipulation, the groups did not differ in mood, urge to drink or motivation to restrain consumption. During the subsequent taste test, participants whose self-control resources were depleted consumed more alcohol than did those in the control group. Additionally, the IAT, but not an explicit measure of alcohol motivation, more strongly predicted alcohol use when self-control resources were depleted. The results indicate that the IAT may have utility in predicting dyscontrolled alcohol use.     

Furnishing hypnotic instructions with implementation intentions enhances hypnotic responsiveness

Forming implementation intentions has been consistently shown to be a powerful self-regulatory strategy. As the self-regulation of thoughts is important for the experience of involuntariness in the hypnotic context, investigating the effectiveness of implementation intentions on the suppression of thoughts was the focus of the present study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (hypnotic instruction plus implementation intention, hypnotic instruction, implementation intention, and control condition). Results showed that participants who received information included in the "Carleton Skill Training Program" and in addition formed implementation intentions improved their hypnotic responsiveness as compared to all of the other three groups on measures of objective responding and involuntary responding. Thus, in line with the nonstate or cognitive social-psychological view of hypnosis stating that an individual's hypnotic suggestibility is not dispositional but modifiable, our results suggest that hypnotic responsiveness can be heightened by furnishing hypnotic instructions with ad hoc implementation intentions.     

Triggering Conservation of the Self's Regulatory Resources

Three experiments investigated people's motivation to conserve the self's limited regulatory resource after it is depleted by initial self-control exertion. Across the experiments, the results supported the idea of a conservation process. In Experiment 1, depleted participants' subsequent performance decreased when expecting to engage in a future self-regulation task compared to engaging in no task at all. In Experiments 2 and 3 we employed the “end-effect” pattern found in past vigilance research to further examine conservation. In Experiment 2, depleted and nondepleted participants who knew the study ran for 30 min performed similarly following 20 min of self-regulation, whereas 3 min or 10 min of self-regulation produced typical depletion effects. Likewise, the findings from Experiment 3 revealed this same conservation pattern using a shortened 6-min initial task. Specifically, when depleted participants believed the study was finished their task performance was better compared to those who believed the study would run for another 20 min. In short, the current findings support the idea of conservation—decrements in self-regulatory performance may represent an adaptive inclination to conserve the self's diminished resources rather than an inability to wield further self-control.     

Investigating Correlates of Self-Regulation in Early Childhood with a Representative Sample of English-Speaking American Families

Children who possess less self-regulatory skill are at a disadvantage when compared to children who demonstrate greater skill at regulating their emotions, cognitions and behavior. Children with these regulatory deficits have difficulty connecting with peers, generating relationships with teachers, negotiating their social world, and succeeding academically. By understanding the correlates of self-regulatory abilities, interventions can be developed to ensure that children at-risk for poor self-regulation receive the support necessary to enhance their regulatory skills. Using data from a nationally representative survey of English-speaking American parents with children between the ages of two and eight (n = 1,141), we evaluated a host of demographic and parenting variables to isolate the correlates of self-regulation. Older children were found to have fewer regulatory problems than younger children while children from low-income homes and male children were found to have greater problems with self-regulation. Minority status, household composition (single vs multi-parent), and parental education were not significant correlates of self-regulation. Findings also illustrate the powerful relationship between parenting style and self-regulation. Parents who rely on nurturing parenting practices that reinforce the child’s sense of autonomy while still maintaining a consistent parenting presence (i.e., authoritative parenting) have children who demonstrate stronger self-regulatory skills. Parents who exert an excess of parental control (i.e., authoritarian parents) have children with weaker self-regulatory skills. And lastly, parents who have notable absence of control (i.e., permissive parents) are more likely to have children with considerable regulatory deficits. Results offer implications for both practitioners and scholars.     

Forewarned is forearmed: Conserving self-control strength to resist social influence

Recent research has shown that resisting persuasion involves active self-regulation. Resisting an influence attempt consumes self-regulatory resources, and in a state of self-regulatory resource depletion, people become more susceptible to (unwanted) influence attempts. However, the present studies show that a forewarning of an impending influence attempt prompts depleted individuals to conserve what is left of their regulatory resources and thus promotes self-regulatory efficiency. As a result, when these individuals are subsequently confronted with a persuasive request, they comply less (Experiments 1 and 3), and generate more counterarguments (Experiment 2) than their depleted counterparts who were not forewarned and thus did not conserve their resources, and they are as able as non-depleted participants to resist persuasion.