Modulation of the startle response in verbal aggressors: Differences among stimuli with distinct affective social content.

Abstract

The emotional response to socially affective stimuli is an important variable to understand aggression. Research is lacking on the psychophysiological basis of verbal aggressiveness that would allow the identification of these emotional responses. The aim of the present study was to investigate modulation of the startle response in verbal aggressors during the presentation of visual stimuli with different affective social content. Acoustic startle probes were administered to 29 verbal aggressors and 28 non-verbal aggressors while viewing slides from the International Affective Picture System, which contains sexual, filial, neutral, unpleasant, and suffering of others pictures. Verbal aggressors showed a low startle response to sexual pictures compared with non-verbal aggressors and a potentiated startle response to neutral pictures compared with unpleasant, filial, and suffering of others pictures. These differences were observed among women. Based on previous studies, the present results may be explained by high testosterone levels, low cortisol levels, and moral disengagement exhibited by verbally aggressive women.

Is There Really a Relationship Between Empathy and Aggression? Evidence From Physiological and Self-Report Measures

“…Studies that use these measures combine the presentation of stimuli (e.g., pictures) with different affective social content and evaluate physiological reactions (e.g., facial electromyography, heart rate [HR], and skin conductance response [SCR]; Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert, & Lang, 2001; Gantiva, Díaz, Ospina, Gutierrez, & Romo-Gonzalez, 2014). These types of studies have the advantage of evaluating automatic reactions that are under little voluntary control, which decreases the bias of social desirability of the self-report measures (Vachon et al, 2014) or errors in the recognition of facial expressions in studies that evaluate facial/gestural reactions.…”

Valores normativos del sistema internacional de imágenes afectivas en población mexicana: diferencias entre Estados Unidos, Colombia y México

“…Finalmente, algunas limitaciones deben ser tenidas en cuenta, pese a que este estudio se llevó a cabo en estudiantes universitarios, las investigaciones realizadas en diferentes países han utilizado poblaciones similares (Dufey et al, 2011;Gantiva et al, 2011;Lang et al, 1999;Lang et al, 2008;Moltó et al, 1999;Silva, 2011;Verschuere et al, 2001;Vila et al, 2001), y los resultados han demostrado ser confiables como punto de referencia para llevar a cabo investigaciones posteriores en poblaciones específicas, por ejemplo consumidores de sustancias psicoactivas (Gantiva, Rodriguez, Arias, & Rubio, 2012;Muñoz et al, 2009), personas agresivas (Gantiva, Díaz, Ospina, Gutierrez, & Romo-Gonzalez, 2014), con niveles significativos de ansiedad (Lang, Davis, & Öhman, 2000), depresión (Taubitz, Robinson, & Larson, 2013), entre otras.…”