Physical aggression is associated with heightened social reflection impulsivity.

Abstract

Physical aggression harms individuals, disrupts social functioning across multiple forms of psychopathology, and leads to destruction within communities. Physical aggression is associated with aberrations in the interpretation of ambiguous information. However, the specific cognitive mechanisms supporting this link remain elusive. One potentially relevant cognitive mechanism is reflection impulsivity, the amount of information gathered during decision-making. Reflection impulsivity characterizes how individuals resolve ambiguity in the process of forming judgments when multiple interpretations of a stimulus are possible. In a sample of 98 incarcerated men, we examined reflection impulsivity using a novel social information sampling task. The primary aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between physical aggression and social reflection impulsivity. Additionally, we assessed the frequency of different social judgments (hostile vs. benign), the extent to which reflection impulsivity varied in the context of these different social judgments, and subjective certainty about social judgments. Finally, we investigated whether social reflection impulsivity moderated the relationship between physical aggressiveness and violent crime. Results indicated that more physically aggressive individuals displayed heightened social reflection impulsivity, which was amplified in the context of hostile judgments. Moreover, more physically aggressive individuals were more certain about their hostile judgments and more certain when judgments were made with unconstrained access to behavioral information. Finally, impulsive hostile judgments in physically aggressive individuals related to a more extensive history of assault charges. These findings suggest that physically aggressive individuals exhibit deficits in information gathering, leading to ill-informed and inflexible social judgments. General Scientific Summary Physical aggression is a costly form of human behavior that is evident across multiple forms of psychopathology. This study provides the first direct evidence that more physically aggressive individuals gather less evidence during social decision-making (i.e., exhibit heightened social reflection impulsivity), particularly while making hostile judgments, and yet they are nevertheless more certain about their hostile judgments. Moreover, physically aggressive individuals with more pronounced social reflection impulsivity have a more extensive history of assault charges, highlighting the real-world implications of this social-cognitive process.

Physical Aggression Is Associated With More Effective Postdecisional Processing of Social Threat

“…This finding mirrors the main effect of dominant emotion on confidence reported above (i.e., that participants were more confident in their decisions about mostly happy faces compared with mostly angry faces). Furthermore, this finding is consistent with previous research indicating that people are more confident when they make benign compared with hostile judgments of others (Brennan & Baskin-Sommers, 2019; Rand, Ohtsuki, & Nowak, 2009; Siegel, Mathys, Rutledge, & Crockett, 2018).…”

“…Turning to our next set of hypotheses regarding the extent to which confidence was affected by ambiguity and the emotion decision made, we did not find evidence that physical aggression was associated with less modulation of confidence as a function of ambiguity or heightened confidence in angry decisions. Both of these hypotheses were based on an earlier study by Brennan and Baskin-Sommers (2019), in which participants completed a social-decision-making task. In the task, participants gathered information about the negative and positive behaviors of a hypothetical person and then decided whether the person was “nasty” or “nice.” This task differed from the present task in several important ways.…”

“…The AQ is a reliable, valid, and widely used measure of aggression (Harris, 1997; Tremblay & Ewart, 2005), with evidence for adequate reliability and validity in incarcerated samples (Archer & Haigh, 1997; Ireland & Archer, 2004). On the basis of previous research that demonstrated specificity of effects to physical aggression (e.g., Brennan & Baskin-Sommers, 2019, 2020; Wilkowski & Robinson, 2012), the hypotheses in the present study centered on physical aggression. Scores for the Physical Aggression subscale can range from 5 to 45; higher scores indicated individuals’ greater endorsement that certain physically aggressive behaviors were characteristic of themselves.…”

“…We were particularly interested in examining change in confidence over time as an index of postdecisional processing because this construct is most directly relevant to social-decision maintenance in physical aggression. For confidence as a function of facial characteristics, we hypothesized that physical aggression would be associated with less modulation of confidence as a function of ambiguity (Hypothesis 2) on the basis of previous research that suggested a failure of physically aggressive individuals to appropriately calibrate their confidence to match the level of ambiguity in the decision-making context (Brennan & Baskin-Sommers, 2019). For confidence as a function of emotion decisions, we hypothesized that physical aggression would be associated with heightened confidence in angry decisions (i.e., decisions that faces were angry; Hypothesis 3) on the basis of previous research that indicated heightened confidence in threat-based decisions among more physically aggressive individuals (Brennan & Baskin-Sommers, 2019).…”

“…According to the existing evidence, it appears that once physically aggressive individuals form decisions that others are threatening, these decisions are more likely to persist over time. When deciding about others’ traits, more physically aggressive individuals are more certain about their decisions that others are hostile, which suggests that these decisions are less flexible and are more likely to endure (Brennan & Baskin-Sommers, 2019). Moreover, physical aggression is robustly linked to angry rumination, a pattern of repetitive and unintentional thinking that persists after an anger-provoking experience (Anestis, Anestis, Selby, & Joiner, 2009; Bushman, 2002; Denson, 2013; Peled & Moretti, 2007; Sukhodolsky, Golub, & Cromwell, 2001; Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008).…”