Sex differences in direct aggression: What are the psychological mediators?

Abstract

NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Aggression and Violent Behavior. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A denitive version was subsequently published in Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11, 3, May-June 2006, 10.1016/j.avb.2005.002. Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. 3Men engage in more direct aggression than women, although the effect size varies as a function of the seriousness of the act and the data source.The results of several meta-analytic reviews are summarised in Table 1 Studies of the effect of provocation and emotional arousal provide a useful roadmap with which to begin this journey. Provocation increases aggression (Berkowitz, 1989;Bettencourt and Miller, 1996). Provocation also diminishes the magnitude of the sex difference, from d = .33 to d = .17 (Bettencourt and Miller, 1996). Knight, Guthrie, Page and Fabes (2002) examined emotional arousal as an explanation of this effect. They proposed that at very low levels of arousal, sex differences are small because both sexes are able to regulate their emotion and behavior. At high levels of Although the present article focuses upon these emotional and motivational bases, this in no way diminishes the importance of cognitive

The Influence of Aggression-Evoking Cues on Aggressive Cognitions in Males and Females: Different Procedures – Similar Effects

“…Thus, when aggressive cognition is considered, sex differences-at least those regarding the frequency of thoughts about hitting or killing somebody-disappear. Although females try to inhibit their physical aggression (Campbell 2006) and perceive aggression as harmful and dysfunctional due to holding expressive beliefs about aggression (Campbell and Muncer 2008), they maintain physical aggression as the core of the associative network related to aggression concepts, just as men do. However, it remains an open question how it happens that, in spite of activating physically aggressive cognitions, females externalize aggression primarily in indirect ways, as opposed to males, who show consistency with regard to physically aggressive cognitions and behaviors.…”

“…When typical masculine primes among males are used, their effect on aggressive cognitions should appear mostly in case of physical aggressive cognitions, since physical aggression is typical for males. However, female aggression is guided by the rule of low risk, which means that physical aggression is avoided because retaliation for physical aggression is highly probable and the likelihood of being injured increases (Campbell 2006). Thus, relational and to some extent verbal aggression meets the requirements of so called "effect/danger ratio" (Björkqvist 1994) better than does physical aggression, but little is known about whether this rule also refers to aggressive cognition.…”

“…Therefore, when these different categories are stimulated, physically aggressive cognitions alone should not be activated, and not necessarily at all, especially when female participants are included into the study. Physical aggression is a risky form of aggressive behavior for females (Björkqvist 1994;Campbell 2006). Moreover, it has consequences for a victim that are easy for a perpetrator to observe, a factor which can diminish female direct aggression.…”

How attribution influences aggression: Answers to an old question by using an implicit measure of anger

“…Yet, we believe that there is no reason to assume that the mechanisms are gender specific. In particular, research has shown that women equally experience anger but tend to control their aggressive behavior more than men (Campbell, 2006;Eagly & Steffen, 1986;Knight et al, 2002). Therefore, it seems plausible that also among females, attribution may affect controllable aggressive behavior more than implicit anger.…”

“…First, aggression research suggests that there are remarkable gender differences in aggressive behavior (Bettencourt & Miller, 1996;Eagly & Steffen, 1986). Because these differences are mainly due to differences in control of aggressive impulses (Campbell, 2006;Knight, Guthrie, Page, & Fabes, 2002) we would have expected complex interactions of gender, attribution, and type of measure. Second, most of previous studies on attribution and aggression that provided the basis for our study were conducted only on male participants (Epstein & Taylor, 1967;Johnson & Rule, 1986;Kremer & Stephens, 1983;Kulik & Brown, 1979;Nickel, 1974;Zillmann & Cantor, 1976).…”