Developmental and dynamic dimensions of hate,rage, and violence

Abstract

Hate may be regarded as a complex affective-cognitive emotion and attitude alloyed with aggression. Hate and aggression have both neurobiological and environmental determinants. Hate may be overt or covert, externalized or internalized, and/or somatized. Persistent recurrent painful and traumatic experiences generate and exacerbate hate and aggression. An amalgam of hate and love is evident in the ambivalence of all self and object relationships and in conscious and unconscious fantasy. In the mature personality, there is a preponderance of love over hate. There may be justified hatred of sociopathic individuals and groups.     

Anger and hostility from the perspective of the Big Five personality model

Sanz, J., García‐Vera, M. P. & Magán, I. (2010). Anger and hostility from the perspective of the Big Five personality model. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 262–270. This study was aimed at examining the relationships of the personality dimensions of the five‐factor model or Big Five with trait anger and with two specific traits of hostility (mistrust and confrontational attitude), and identifying the similarities and differences between trait anger and hostility in the framework of the Big Five. In a sample of 353 male and female adults, the Big Five explained a significant percentage of individual differences in trait anger and hostility after controlling the effects due to the relationship between both constructs and content overlapping across scales. In addition, trait anger was primarily associated with neuroticism, whereas mistrust and confrontational attitude were principally related to low agreeableness. These findings are discussed in the context of the anger‐hostility‐aggression syndrome and the capability of the Big Five for organizing and clarifying related personality constructs.     

Investigating curvilinear relationships of explicit and implicit aggression with workplace outcomes

ABSTRACT

Although previous research has demonstrated the value of integrating explicit and implicit measures of aggression for predicting workplace outcomes, such investigations only examined linear and interactive effects. Here we examine nonlinear (i.e., curvilinear) effects of explicit and implicit aggression, which revealed subtleties in the manifestation of aggression. We found significant curvilinear effects of explicit aggression on peer-reported deviance (property deviance, production deviance, and personal aggression). In each case, deviance was lowest when explicit aggression was low, and increased as explicit aggression increased. However, production and property deviance decreased at elevated levels of explicit aggression. In contrast, for disciplinary actions, explicit and implicit aggression interacted, but there was also a curvilinear effect of implicit aggression. This pattern led to discipline being highest when explicit and implicit aggression were very incongruent, but being quite low when they were congruent. The results show that examining nonlinear effects with respect to explicit and implicit aggression can reveal unexpected relationships when predicting peer-reported criteria or organizational personnel data. Propositions for future research on the relationship of personality to workplace outcomes are presented deriving from the trait activation model, and implications for workplace interventions are discussed.     

Distraction and reappraisal efficiency on immediate negative emotional responses: role of trait anxiety

Background and Objectives: Emotion regulation involves attempts to influence emotion unfolding and may target experiential, expressive and physiological responses. Several strategies can be used, such as reappraisal (re-evaluating the emotional situation to reduce its emotional meaning) or distraction (turning the attention toward non-emotional aspects of the situation). Previous research on these regulation strategies produced contrasting results regarding their efficiency and we hypothesize that this could be due to individual differences such as trait anxiety.

Design and Methods: Participants (N?=?77) were confronted with negative pictures and we examined the differential emotional reactivity according to trait anxiety, followed by a comparison of the efficiency of reappraisal and distraction in reducing emotional responses.

Results: Results show that trait anxiety has no impact on reactivity at the experiential and expressive levels, but has an impact at the physiological level, where high anxiety individuals show increased cardiac orienting effect, as well as higher skin conductance and respiratory rate. Regarding regulation, reappraisal and distraction successfully reduce emotional experience and expressivity, but not physiological arousal.

Conclusions: Such contrasting results involve that high trait anxiety individuals might benefit from the use of other kinds of strategies than reappraisal and distraction, some that may successfully target physiological responses.