Individual Differences in the Extent and Development of Aggressive Cognitive-Associative Networks

This article extends Berkowitz's cognitive neoassociationist aggression model by considering the role of personality variables. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that high-trait-aggressive individuals have more developed aggressive cognitive-associative networks than low-trait-aggressive individuals. Participants provided similarity ratings of word pairs; some words were aggressive (e.g., fight), and some were ambiguous with respect to aggression (e.g., alley). Associations among aggressive words, and associations between aggressive and ambiguous words, were stronger for high-trait-aggressive individuals. In Experiment 2, participants rated the stimulus words used in Experiment 1. Individuals afraid of becoming the victims of aggression rated the stimulus words as both aggressive and frightening, whereas individuals likely to be the perpetrators of aggression rated the words as aggressive but not frightening.

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