Factorial Analysis and Invariance Testing for Age and Gender of the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ)

Abstract

Reactive aggression is characterized by high emotional activation, impulsivity, and hostility, while proactive aggression presents a cold, instrumental, and planned strategy. The aim was to perform a psychometric analysis of the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire [RPQ]. A non-probability sample of 502 people between 18 and 40 years old was formed, grouped by sex (n=297, 59.2% women and n=205, 40.8% men) and age (n = 224, 44.62% under 25 years old and n=278, 55.38% over 25 years old). The instruments were the RPQ, the Anger Rumination Scale (ARS), and an affective scale (PANAS) in printed format. In this instrumental psychometric study, we found that the RPQ fits better in a model of two factors interrelated with residual covariances (CFI = .928, RMSEA = .044), presenting significant correlations with negative affect and anger rumination, as evidence of validity of concurrent criterion, especially with reactive aggression (anger rumination r = .542, and negative affect r = .359). Also, the test was not invariant between sexes and ages, given that the best fit was in the male sex and those under 25 years of age (∆CFI < 0.01, ∆RMSEA < 0.015). We concluded that women and adults over the age of 25 have a different aggressive response profile. These findings represent new directions of research around the measurement of aggressive behavior and the development of gender differentiated interventions for adolescents and young adults.

Hostile Attribution Bias and Anger Rumination Sequentially Mediate the Association Between Trait Anger and Reactive Aggression

“…Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were conducted using SPSS25.0. Previous studies have shown that age and gender may related to aggression or anger rumination ( Zsila et al, 2019 ; Toro-Tobar et al, 2020 ), therefore, age and gender were included in the correlation analysis. As predicted, analyses revealed significant relationships among all the studied variables (see Table 1 ).…”

Callous-Unemotional Traits in Adolescents' Daily Life: Associations with Affect and Emotional and Conduct Problems

“…Notably, the links between CU traits and conduct problems at the daily within-person level could possibly be instantiated by their intermediate and differential links involving daily positive and negative affect. Although most research places negatively valenced emotion processes at the center of personality and psychopathology, some research has implicated positive affect in the development of aggressive behaviors (Toro et al, 2020 ). In addition, affect and emotion are best conceptualized as dynamic processes underpinning a range of psychopathological outcomes (Houben et al, 2015 ).…”

The Dark Sides of the Brain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Studies on Aggression

“…64), which is thought to be attributable to high items loadings on both factors 11 . Nevertheless, factor analyses on the widely used Reactive-Proactive Questionnaire (RPQ) 12 support the two-factor structure of the functions of aggression [12][13][14] . Main forms of aggression include Physical Aggression (i.e., causing physical harm to others, e.g., hitting, biting, kicking, 15,16 ), Verbal Aggression (i.e., using speech to psychologically hurt others, e.g., shouting/screaming, insults, threats, 15,16 ), but also Indirect (i.e., relational, or social behaviors intended to harm social relationships, e.g., manipulation, damage relationships, 17,18 ).…”