Hostile attribution bias among offenders and non‐offenders: Making social information processing more adequate

Zajenkowska, Anna; Prusik, Monika; Jasielska, Dorota; Szulawski, Michał

doi:10.1002/casp.2493

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 64 publications

(77 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This was in keeping with the idea that cognitive distortions facilitate aggression by protecting the perpetrator from self‐blame (Oostermeijer et al, 2017) Disregarding the impact of one's acts on others (self‐centeredness), was relevant to verbal aggression, similar to previous findings of an association between self‐centered impulsivity and hostility in forensic psychiatric patients (Edens & McDermott, 2010). Finally, a tendency to blame others for negative outcomes (blaming others), was relevant to indirect aggression, consistent with previous evidence that provocation to anger is mediated by hostile attributions of others, including the observation that this tendency is more pronounced in forensic populations (Zajenkowska et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Cognitive distortions mediate relationships between early maladaptive schemas and aggression in women and men

Huang

Molenberghs²,

Mussap

2023

Aggressive Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Difficult childhood experiences can lead to the development of early maladaptive schemas (EMS) that cause emotional and behavioral problems later in life. The present study examined the role of cognitive distortions in mediating relationships between EMS and aggression in adults as a function of sex. Participants were 59 women (Mage = 34.7 years, standard deviation [SD] = 8.0) and 86 men (Mage = 39.3 years, SD = 13.2) who completed the Young Schema Questionnaire—Short Form‐V3, the How I Think Questionnaire of cognitive distortions, and the Buss–Warren Aggression Questionnaire. Multiple mediation analysis identified EMS domain impaired limits to be uniquely and directly related to aggression, and the domain impaired autonomy to be indirectly related via a range of cognitive distortions. Multigroup analyses revealed no sex differences in these relationships, and analysis of covariance with age as a covariate revealed no sex differences in levels of EMS, cognitive distortion, or aggression. The results suggest that impaired limits and impaired autonomy are EMS domains of relevance to aggression regardless of sex. Furthermore, in the case of impaired autonomy, self‐serving, proaggression cognitive distortions appear to be involved. Interventions for aggression may thus benefit by focusing on clients with entitlement/grandiosity traits indicative of impaired limits, and vulnerability/dependence traits indicative of impaired autonomy, and in the latter case consider addressing the self‐serving cognitions that enable the expression of aggression in these clients.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Cognitive distortions mediate relationships between early maladaptive schemas and aggression in women and men

Huang

Molenberghs²,

Mussap

2023

Aggressive Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our results are, then, in line with previous findings on cognitive flexibility and feedback‐processing relating to own performance (Vilà‐Balló et al., 2015). Social information processing can be improved by means of specific psychological training and be a valuable tool in offender rehabilitation (Zajenkowska et al., 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

External locus of control and cognitive ability independently distinguish men in prison from community living non‐offending men

Fontao

Roß

2021

Criminal Behav Ment Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background The ability to cope with failure and subsequent feedback is crucial for prisoner rehabilitation. Impaired executive function in prisoners, high trait aggression and external locus of control can undermine the capacity to react to feedback in socially adaptive ways. Aim To investigate the relationships between aggression, locus of control, and attribution in an experimental task involving feedback about failure and success. Methods Two groups were compared: 1. Imprisoned men, 2. Community living men without a history of incarceration. Aggression, locus of control and reasoning ability were assessed by means of psychometric instruments. An experimental task building on cognitive ability and providing performance‐related feedback was carried out. Attributions of failure and success were measured using an ad hoc rating scale. Results Prisoners reported higher levels of aggression and generalised externality, but poorer reasoning ability than the comparison group. Aggression was associated with external locus of control. In the experimental task, the community group showed higher success rates; higher scores on the task were correlated with less external attribution of own performance. Higher external locus of control and lower reasoning ability were independently associated with being a prisoner in a logistic regression model. Conclusions and Implications Men in prison were characterised by greater social and fatalistic externality paired with lower reasoning ability than never incarcerated community men. In‐prison rehabilitation strategies should pay early attention to improving reasoning ability and enabling men to recognise likely overuse of externally attributing their difficulties to fate, then helping them to become more realistic in their attributions and make use of realistic feedback.

show abstract

“…Factor analytic studies related to investigating HA with vignette-based questionnaires (e.g., AIHQ, Combs et al, 2007) have given some inconclusive results as to how HA can be understood. Some studies report that the items load on a single factor representing a unitary hostile attributional style (e.g., Buck et al, 2017;Mancuso et al, 2011), but other have found that hostile attributions are a function of the different types of relationships described in each vignette (Zajenkowska et al, 2018, Zajenkowska, Prusik, et al, 2021), such as for example friends or strangers. This differentiation of attributions indicates that social contextual factors strongly affect the tendency to make hostile attributions and that the who the actor is should be included and examined in studies (A.…”

Section: Hostile Attributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intentionality, itself, is not directly related to anger. It is, however, strongly related to blame, and blame is, in turn, strongly related to anger (Zajenkowska, Prusik, et al, 2021). As a result, intentionality and blame attributions might plausibly form a hierarchical structure, one leading to another (from intentionality to blame and then to anger) (Zajenkowska, Prusik, et al, 2021).…”

Section: Hostile Attributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is, however, strongly related to blame, and blame is, in turn, strongly related to anger (Zajenkowska, Prusik, et al, 2021). As a result, intentionality and blame attributions might plausibly form a hierarchical structure, one leading to another (from intentionality to blame and then to anger) (Zajenkowska, Prusik, et al, 2021). Intentionality ascription influences the attribution of blame in two ways: it not only amplifies perceived blame but also structures the processing of information (Malle et al, 2014).…”

Section: Hostile Attributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reduced attention toward faces, intentionality and blame ascription in violent offenders and community‐based adults: Evidence from an eye‐tracking study

Zajenkowska

Bodecka

Duda

et al. 2022

Aggressive Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

People typically have a strong bias in attention toward faces to help them understand social interactions. Nonetheless some people, like incarcerated offenders and psychopaths, exhibit deficits in "face reading," which may impair their interpretations, especially in case of attribution allocation in harmful events. In these cases, the ascription of intentionality is key in understanding the allocation of blame and structuring social information processing. Consequently, in the current study, in addition to typically studied intentionality and blame ascription levels (subfactors of hostile attributions), we also propose a new indicator of hostile attributions: intentionality/blame isomorphism, indicating reduced differentiation between those two factors. Violent prison inmates (N = 63) and community-based adults without previous history of incarceration (N = 63) took part in an eye-tracking study. In line with our hypotheses, offenders exhibited reduced attention orienting to faces as well as greater intentionality/blame isomorphism. In the case of both groups, people looked longer at the faces of the harm doer compared with the harm receiver.Additionally, greater intentionality/blame isomorphism predicted reduced attention to faces; however, when group status was included in the model, it became the only significant predictor of the attention to faces. Future studies should examine the origins of these gaze and attribution patterns and investigate consequences related to social perception and interactions of people prone to violence.

show abstract

Hostile attribution bias among offenders and non‐offenders: Making social information processing more adequate

Cited by 8 publications

References 64 publications

Cognitive distortions mediate relationships between early maladaptive schemas and aggression in women and men

Cognitive distortions mediate relationships between early maladaptive schemas and aggression in women and men

External locus of control and cognitive ability independently distinguish men in prison from community living non‐offending men

Reduced attention toward faces, intentionality and blame ascription in violent offenders and community‐based adults: Evidence from an eye‐tracking study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About