How does emotion shape aggressive behavior of violent offenders? An explanation based on emotion regulation theory

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2022.00270

Abstract

Abstract:

Based on emotion regulation theory, the present study takes violent offenders as participants, and explores the role of emotion in the process of aggression through two studies. Study 1 used the adapted reaction-time competition paradigm to measure aggressive behavior. The results showed that emotion regulation motivation played a complete mediating role between negative affect and aggression, which confirmed that violent offenders would conduct aggressive behavior in order to regulate emotions in negative affectional states. Study 2 further showed that aggression can indeed play a role in regulating emotions. Specifically, in violent offenders, reactive aggression will be accompanied by the improvement of positive affect and the decline of negative affect; after proactive aggression, both positive and negative affect of individuals will increase. The present study confirmed the emotion regulation theory of aggression from two aspects: the expectation of aggression result and the actual effect of aggression, and put forward a new explanation for the role of emotion in the process of aggression. In the future research and practice, individuals should try to avoid adjusting emotions through aggression, and we can guide them to use reasonable ways to adjust emotions to reduce the occurrence of aggressive behavior.

Key words: emotion regulation theory, negative affect, positive affect, aggressive behavior, violent offenders

LIU Yuping, ZHOU Bingtao, YANG Bo. (2022). How does emotion shape aggressive behavior of violent offenders? An explanation based on emotion regulation theory. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 54(3), 270-280.

Figures/Tables 5

References 47

[1]	Allen, T. J., Moeller, F. G., Rhoades, H. M., & Cherek, D. R. (1997). Participants with a history of drug dependence are more aggressive than participants with no drug use history. Drug & Alcohol Dependence, 46(1-2), 95-103.
[2]	American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
[3]	Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2002). Human aggression. Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 27-51. doi: 10.1146/psych.2002.53.issue-1 URL
[4]	Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., DeWall, C. N., & Zhang, L. Q. (2007). How emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 167-203. doi: 10.1177/1088868307301033 pmid: 18453461
[5]	Blair, R. J. R. (2013). The neurobiology of psychopathic traits in youths. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(11), 786-799. doi: 10.1038/nrn3577 URL
[6]	Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Behavioral confirmation of everyday sadism. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2201- 2209. doi: 10.1177/0956797613490749 pmid: 24022650
[7]	Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., & Phillips, C. M. (2001). Do people aggress to improve their mood? Catharsis beliefs, affect regulation opportunity, and aggressive responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1), 17-32. pmid: 11474722
[8]	Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., & Stack, A. D. (1999). Catharsis, aggression, and persuasive influence: Self-fulfilling or self-defeating prophecies? Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 76(3), 367-376.
[9]	Buss, A. H., & Perry, M. (1992). The aggression questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(3), 452-459. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.63.3.452 pmid: 1403624
[10]	Carlsmith, K. M., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). The paradoxical consequences of revenge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1316-1324. doi: 10.1037/a0012165 pmid: 19025285
[11]	Chester, D. S. (2017). The role of positive affect in aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(4), 366-370. doi: 10.1177/0963721417700457 URL
[12]	Chester, D. S., & DeWall, C. N. (2016). The pleasure of revenge: Retaliatory aggression arises from a neural imbalance toward reward. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(7), 1173-1182. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsv082 pmid: 26117504
[13]	Chester, D. S., & DeWall, C. N. (2017). Combating the sting of rejection with the pleasure of revenge: A new look at how emotion shapes aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(3), 413-430. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000080 pmid: 27808535
[14]	Chester, D. S., DeWall, C. N., & Enjaian, B. (2019). Sadism and aggressive behavior: Inflicting pain to feel pleasure. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(8), 1252-1268. doi: 10.1177/0146167218816327 pmid: 30571456
[15]	Cialdini, R. B., Baumann, D. J., & Kenrick, D. T. (1981). Insights from sadness: A three-step model of the development of altruism as hedonism. Developmental Review, 1(3), 207-223. doi: 10.1016/0273-2297(81)90018-6 URL
[16]	Denson, T. F. (2015). Four promising psychological interventions for reducing reactive aggression. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 3, 136-141. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.04.003 URL
[17]	de Quervain, D. J. F., Fischbacher, U., Treyer, V., Schellhammer, M., Schnyder, U., Buck, A., & Fehr, E. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305(5688), 1254-1258. doi: 10.1126/science.1100735 URL
[18]	DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., Chester, D. S., & Bushman, B. J. (2016). How often does currently felt emotion predict social behavior and judgment? A Meta-Analytic test of two theories. Emotion Review, 8(2), 136-143. doi: 10.1177/1754073915572690 URL
[19]	Eadeh, F. R., Peak, S. A., & Lambert, A. J. (2017). The bittersweet taste of revenge: On the negative and positive consequences of retaliation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 68, 27-39. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.007 URL
[20]	Gollwitzer, M., Meder, M., & Schmitt, M. (2011). What gives victims satisfaction when they seek revenge? European Journal of Social Psychology, 41(3), 364-374. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.782 URL
[21]	Guan, M. Z., Liu, X. F., Miao, D. M., Lv, J., Hong, X., & Yang, H. (2010). A comparison of violent attitude between passionate criminals and recidivists. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 42(05), 599-606. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2010.00599 URL
[22]	Huang, L., Yang, T. Z., & Ji, Z. M. (2003). Applicability of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale in Chinese. Chinese Mental Health Journal, 17(1), 56-58.
[23]	Jiang, J., & Xu, Y. (2007). Survey on antisocial personality disorders in criminals. Chinese Journal of Special Education, (5), 80-85.
[24]	Jin, G., Shou, J. L., & Lin, X. N. (2019). Analysis and forecast of China's crime situation (2018-2019). Journal of People's Public Security University of China (Social Sciences Edition), 35(3), 1-11.
[25]	Kiriakidis, S. P. (2008). Moral disengagement: Relation to delinquency and independence from indices of social dysfunction. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 52(5), 571-583. pmid: 18025073
[26]	Krizan, Z., & Johar, O. (2015). Narcissistic rage revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(5), 784-801. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000013 URL
[27]	Lambert, A. J., Peak, S. A., Eadeh, F. R., & Schott, J. P. (2014). How do you feel now? On the perceptual distortion of extremely recent changes in anger. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 82-95. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2014.01.004 URL
[28]	Larsen, R. J. (2000). Toward a science of mood regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 11(3), 129-141. doi: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1103_01 URL
[29]	Leith, K. P., & Baumeister, R. F. (1996). Why do bad moods increase self-defeating behavior? Emotion, risk taking, and self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(6), 1250-1267. pmid: 8979390
[30]	Li, C., Sun, Y., Ho, M. Y., You, J., Shaver, P. R., & Wang, Z. (2016). State narcissism and aggression: The mediating roles of anger and hostile attributional bias. Aggressive Behavior, 42(4), 333-345. doi: 10.1002/ab.v42.4 URL
[31]	Liu, H. Y. (2019). Advanced Statistics for Psychology. Beijing: China Renmin University Press.
[32]	Liu, Y. P., Guo, X., Bai, S. L., Mo, N. J., Zhang, Z., & Yang, B. (2019). Effect of child trauma on aggressive in drug abstainers: Mediating of psychopathy and sensation seeking. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 27(4), 731-735.
[33]	Liu, Y. P., Li, S. S., He, Y., Wang, D. D., & Yang, B. (2021). Eliminating threat or venting rage? The relationship between narcissism and aggression in violent offenders. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 53(3), 244-258. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00244 URL
[34]	O'Meara, A., Davies, J., & Hammond, S. (2021). The psychometric properties and utility of the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale (SSIS). Psychological Assessment, 23(2), 523-531. doi: 10.1037/a0022400 URL
[35]	Parlamis, J. D. (2012). Venting as emotion regulation: The influence of venting responses and respondent identity on anger and emotional tone. International Journal of Conflict Management, 23(1), 77-96. doi: 10.1108/10444061211199322 URL
[36]	Raine, A. (2018). Antisocial personality as a neurodevelopmental disorder. Annual review of clinical psychology, 14, 259-289. doi: 10.1146/clinpsy.2018.14.issue-1 URL
[37]	Raine, A., Dodge, K., Loeber, R., Gatzke-Kopp, L., Lynam, D., Reynolds, C., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., & Liu, J. (2010). The Reactive- Proactive Aggression Questionnaire: Differential correlates of reactive and proactive aggression in adolescent boys. Aggressive Behavior, 32(2), 159-171. doi: 10.1002/(ISSN)1098-2337 URL
[38]	Runions, K. C., Salmivalli, C., Shaw, T., Burns, S., & Cross, D. (2018). Beyond the reactive-proactive dichotomy: Rage, revenge, reward, and recreational aggression predict early high school bully and bully/victim status. Aggressive Behavior, 44(5), 501-511. doi: 10.1002/ab.v44.5 URL
[39]	Stanford, M. S., Houston, R. J., Mathias, C. W., Villemarette-Pittman, N. R., Helfritz, L. E., & Conklin, S. M. (2003). Characterizing aggressive behavior. Assessment, 10(2), 183-190. pmid: 12801190
[40]	Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063-1070. pmid: 3397865
[41]	Weierstall, R., & Elbert, T. (2011). The Appetitive Aggression Scale- development of an instrument for the assessment of human's attraction to violence. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2, Article 8430.
[42]	Wen, Z. L., Hou, J. T., & Chang, L. (2005). A Comparison of moderator and mediator and their applications. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 37(2), 268-274.
[43]	Yang, C. C., Li, C. N., Wang, Z. H., & Bian, Y. F. (2016). The mediational roles of perceived threat, anger, and hostile attribution bias between state narcissism and aggression. Psychological Development and Education, 32(2), 236-245.
[44]	Yang, Y. P., Shen, D. Y., Wang, J. Y., & Yang, J. (2002). The reliability and validity of PDQ-4+ in China. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 10(3), 165-168.
[45]	Yucens, B., & Üzer, A. (2018). The relationship between internet addiction, social anxiety, impulsivity, self-esteem, and depression in a sample of Turkish undergraduate medical students. Psychiatry Research, 267, 313-318. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2018.06.033 URL
[46]	Zhan, J., Xu, H. F., Ren, J., & Luo, J. (2020). Is catharsis beneficial or harmful? The psychological intervention effect and potential harm of catharsis. Advances in Psychological Science, 28(1), 22-32. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2020.00022 URL
[47]	Zhang, L. H., & Miao, L. (2019). Hostile interpretation bias and aggression. Advances in Psychological Science, 27(12), 2097-2108. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2019.02097 URL

Variable	Reactive aggression group M ± SD n = 46	Proactive aggression group M ± SD n = 42	T df = 86	p	Cohen' d
Age	36.02 ± 5.57	35.60 ± 6.25	0.34	0.736	0.07
Educational level	1.78 ± 0.76	1.81 ± 0.63	0.18	0.858	0.04
Original sentence (years)	19.16 ± 7.65	18.71 ± 8.25	0.26	0.793	0.06
Time served (years)	5.65 ± 3.37	5.34 ± 3.92	0.40	0.690	0.09
Hostile cognition	14.93 ± 4.89	12.24 ± 4.43	2.70	0.008	0.58
Negative affect	19.00 ± 6.39	16.05 ± 4.90	2.41	0.018	0.52
Positive affect	30.09 ± 6.12	31.38 ± 7.97	0.86	0.393	0.19
Motivation of emotion regulation	10.59 ± 5.19	10.36 ± 4.58	0.22	0.827	0.05
Aggressive behavior	0.44 ± 2.27	-0.48 ± 1.34	2.27	0.026	0.49

Variable	Reactive aggression group M ± SD n = 46	Proactive aggression group M ± SD n = 42	T df = 86	p	Cohen' d
Age	36.02 ± 5.57	35.60 ± 6.25	0.34	0.736	0.07
Educational level	1.78 ± 0.76	1.81 ± 0.63	0.18	0.858	0.04
Original sentence (years)	19.16 ± 7.65	18.71 ± 8.25	0.26	0.793	0.06
Time served (years)	5.65 ± 3.37	5.34 ± 3.92	0.40	0.690	0.09
Hostile cognition	14.93 ± 4.89	12.24 ± 4.43	2.70	0.008	0.58
Negative affect	19.00 ± 6.39	16.05 ± 4.90	2.41	0.018	0.52
Positive affect	30.09 ± 6.12	31.38 ± 7.97	0.86	0.393	0.19
Motivation of emotion regulation	10.59 ± 5.19	10.36 ± 4.58	0.22	0.827	0.05
Aggressive behavior	0.44 ± 2.27	-0.48 ± 1.34	2.27	0.026	0.49

Variable	1	2	3	4
1 Negative affect	—
2 Positive affect	0.14	—
3 Emotion regulation motivation	0.68^**	0.11	—
4 Aggressive behavior	0.38^**	0.11	0.52^**	—

Variable	1	2	3	4
1 Negative affect	—
2 Positive affect	0.14	—
3 Emotion regulation motivation	0.68^**	0.11	—
4 Aggressive behavior	0.38^**	0.11	0.52^**	—