How sensitivity to provocation shapes encoding and interpretation of ambivalent scenes in an eye tracking study

British J Clinic Psychol

Rogoza

Sasson

et al. 2021

Self Cite

Objectives. Previous work has demonstrated that the tendency to make hostile attributions is not a stable trait but varies across different social situations. Therefore, we sought to investigate whether hostile attributions within clinical samples are better understood as a persistent characteristic or one that varies across contexts.Methods. The current analyses investigated patterns of attributions among people diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCZ, n = 271) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n = 100) and non-clinical control participants (NCC, n = 233) in an existing data set.Results. Results showed that specific relational features in vignettes portraying different social encounters influence the way people make attributions and that variability across contexts is present in both non-clinical and clinical populations. Like non-clinical participants, participants diagnosed with ASD ascribed the greatest hostility to a scene involving an authority figure. In contrast, SCZ participants reported the greatest hostility in response to a scene involving a friend.Conclusions. These findings suggest that salient environmental factors should be considered when assessing social cognitive skills and biases.

Section: Limitations and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Situational context influences the degree of hostile attributions made by individuals with schizophrenia or autism spectrum disorder

British J Clinic Psychol

Rogoza

Sasson

et al. 2021

Self Cite

“…In Sample 2, in addition to the above method, we also used a scene rating task to measure hostile attributions (Wilkowski et al, 2007; Zajenkowska & Rajchert, 2020), which contained 99 pictures presented on a computer monitor. Participants were asked to rate the extent to which the depicted harm was intentional (1 = not intended at all ; 9 = intended ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hostile Attribution Biases in Vulnerable Narcissists Depends on the Socio-Relational Context

Bodecka

Jonason

Journal of Individual Differences

2022

Self Cite

Abstract. Narcissism, especially the vulnerable kind, is associated with anger and hostility. In a sample of outpatients, group psychotherapy ( N = 74) and community members ( N = 153), we replicated and extended previous work linking vulnerable, but not grandiose, narcissism to hostile attributions across different socio-relational contexts. We also examined if the level of ambiguity of social situations, assessed from the other-referent position, influences the relationship between vulnerable narcissism and attributing hostile intentionality, and whether narcissistic individuals distinguish hostile interpretations, depending on the level of ambiguity of the scene. In ambiguous vignettes, assessed from the self-referent position, higher levels of vulnerable narcissism were associated with a greater tendency to infer more attributions of hostile intentions with people with whom there was no close relationship (except for authority in the patient group). In the case of visual scenes, the positive relationship between vulnerable narcissism and attributed hostile intentionality appeared in accidental scenes, but not in hostile and ambiguous ones. In addition, the higher the vulnerable narcissism the lower the ability to differentiate between contextual nuances (e.g., the level of ambiguity). We replicated previous research indicating a relationship between vulnerable narcissism and hostile attribution bias, but shed new light on the phenomenon of this bias in that it appears to depend on the socio-relational context and the level of ambiguity of the situation.

“…To ensure that the facial expression and gestures were typical for females, two women posed and were sketched for each of the scenes. In the complete corpus of stimuli, scenes were either clearly hostile, nonhostile or ambiguous and have been validated accordingly (Wilkowski et al, 2007;Zajenkowska & Rajchert, 2020). For the purpose of the current study, we focused solely on the 54 ambiguous scenes where the intentions of the actor were unclear and could be interpreted as intentional to various degrees (Wilkowski et al, 2007, Zajenkowska & Rajchert, 2020.…”

Section: Procedures and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All scenes were black and white monochrome, the shade of hair of both the harm doer and receiver was randomized (but not equally distributed) across trials, as well as the position (left/right) that the harm doer was placed. On a subsequent screen, participants made, first, intentionality and then blame judgments, for example, "Please rate to what extent the depicted harm was intentional" on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not intended at all) to 9 (intended) and to what extent you would blame the person for that (1 not at all to 9 very much) (see Zajenkowska & Rajchert, 2020).…”

Section: Procedures and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Bodecka

Duda

et al. 2022

Aggressive Behavior

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.