Relationships between Hostility Guilt and Several Measures of Hostility

Abstract

Scores on Mosher's forced-choice Hostility Guilt Scale for females were related to a projective and an objective measure of hostility. The projective measure was the extent to which 70 female undergraduates used the hostile alternative in making up sentences to a list of homonyms with hostile and neutral meanings. The objective measure was the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory. Hostility guilt correlated negatively and significantly with the projective measure and with the following Buss-Durkee scales: Assault, Negativism, Resentment, Suspicion, Verbal and Total Hostility, summing over all subscales except Guilt. The projective measure correlated positively and significantly with the Assault and Suspicion Scales, as well as the Total Hostility Score.

Aggression-guilt and conditionability for aggressiveness

“…This study is the first report of a direct behavioral validation of this particular subscale of the MIST. Schill and Schneider (1970) have reported no significant correlations between the Buss-Durkee Hostihty Guilt Scale and the Mosher Scale used m the present study. However, this lack of correlation is not surprismg when it is remembered that the Buss-Durkee Scale is supposedly a measure of guilt as a feeling state whereas Mosher argues that his aggressionguilt scale is a measure of the disposition to inhibit (or not to inhibit) aggression in the face of provocations.…”

Guilt proneness and expressed emotion in relatives of patients with schizophrenia or related psychoses

“…The hostility-guilt subscale reflects guilty affect and cognition about aggressive behaviour. It is a well-validated measure of 'a disposition to inhibit aggression when faced with provocations' (Mosher, 1979;Schill & Schneider, 1970). The guilty conscience subscale mainly reflects self-blame and self-punitiveness, and to a small extent moral standards.…”

“…Several studies using the Mosher Guilt Inventories and other guilt scales have shown that proneness to guilt inhibits aggression towards others (Abramson et al, 1977;Caprara etal., 1992;Persons, 1970;Schill & Schneider, 1970;Tangney etal., 1992a). In our study, we have shown that this also applies to relatives' attitudes towards a psychotic patient.…”

Models of anger and aggression in the social talk of women and men.

“…A considerable body of research indicates that women engage in aggression less frequently and less extremely than do men. Furthermore, women experience more anxiety about expressing aggression than do men (Brock and Buss 1964;Schill and Schneider 1970;Schill 1972). It seems likely that women, in relating aggressive episodes, would be more likely to see aggression as personally and socially anomic and to anticipate condemnation from the audience.…”