Abstract:

Violence exposure has drawn lots of researchers’ attention recently, for violent incidents in social life has increased significantly. It is believed that violence exposure in daily lives may result in aggressive behaviors and repeated exposure to violence may even alter individual’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes. Exposure to violence may change personal emotions, behavior and cognition by causing physical arousal, strengthening negative emotion and finally making him aggressive. While these results are widely accepted, most of the former researchers mainly put their focus on the effects of fictitious violence such as violent video games and violent TV programs, few are put on daily lives. Beliefs about aggression refer to individuals’ perception of whether aggression is acceptable or not when settling disputes and expressing hatred. It also has a close correlation with aggressive behaviors. Previous studies showed there was a negative correlation between interpersonal trust and aggressive behavior. Therefore, interpersonal trust may work as a moderator in the mediation effect of beliefs about aggression. The current study examined the relationship between violence exposure in real-life and aggressive behaviors. In addition, we investigated whether this relationship was mediated by beliefs about aggression and whether interpersonal trust moderated the relationship between violence exposure and aggressive behaviors mediated by beliefs about aggression. 850 college students, among whom 476 were males and 374 were females, participated our experiment for monetary compensation. Violence Exposure Questionnaire, Normative Beliefs about Aggression Scale, Interpersonal Trust Scale, and the Aggression Questionnaire were used. We also analyzed roles of beliefs about aggression and interpersonal trust playing between violence exposure and aggressive behavior. After reviewing the previous literature, we assumed that beliefs about aggression were considered as mediator and interpersonal trust as moderator. The results were as follows: (1) There was a strong positive correlation between violence exposure in daily surroundings with beliefs about aggression and aggressive behaviors. There was a strong positive correlation between beliefs about aggression and aggressive behaviors. There was a strong negative correlation between interpersonal trust and aggressive behaviors. (2) Beliefs about aggression played a partial mediation role in the relationship between violence exposure in real-life and aggressive behaviors. (3) Interpersonal trust moderated the mediation effect of beliefs about aggression. For individuals with high interpersonal trust, the mediating effect of beliefs about aggression was not significant, and violence exposure in daily surroundings only had a direct effect on aggressive behaviors. For individuals with low interpersonal trust, beliefs about aggression partially played a mediation role in the relationship between violence exposure in real-life and aggressive behaviors. (4) There was a moderated mediation model including violence exposure in real-life, beliefs about aggression, interpersonal trust and aggressive behaviors. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that all fit indexes conformed to statistical requirements. The current study investigated the effects of violence exposure in real-life on one’s aggressive behavior through its mechanism, the mediating effects of aggressive behaviors, roles of beliefs about aggression and interpersonal trust in the purpose of prompting more relevant studies on violence exposure in real-life and aggressive behaviors.

Key words: violence exposure in daily environment, beliefs in aggression, interpersonal trust, aggressive behaviors, moderated mediation