The longitudinal relationship between angry rumination and reactive–proactive aggression and the moderation effect of consideration of future consequences‐immediate

Abstract

The idea that influential factors for two subtypes of aggression (reactive and proactive aggression) should be different is popular, but the common influential factors have not been examined. Such an examination could help understand the influential factors of aggression from the perspective of multiple motivations affecting the development of aggressive motivations over time. The present study argued that angry rumination would be a common influential factor for both reactive and proactive aggression. In addition, consideration of future consequences (CFC) may moderate the longitudinal effect of angry rumination on proactive aggression. Two studies were conducted to test these hypotheses. In Study 1, a cross-lagged analysis with a 6-month interval was employed. A total of 505 undergraduate students (46% males) completed the questionnaires twice. Results indicated that after a 6-month period, angry rumination predicted reactive aggression but not proactive aggression. Furthermore, reactive aggression predicted angry rumination over time. In Study 2, a moderation analysis was performed with another 437 participants (130 males). The results partly supported our hypotheses, indicating that CFC-immediate (CFC-I) moderated the longitudinal effect of angry rumination on proactive aggression. The present results extended prior research regarding the predictors of proactive and reactive aggression and may contribute to a greater understanding of the development of aggressive motivation. In addition, our research suggested that high CFC-I may be an important factor for the motivation change from reactive aggression to proactive aggression.

Hostile Attribution Bias and Anger Rumination Sequentially Mediate the Association Between Trait Anger and Reactive Aggression

“…Figure 1 showed that anger rumination is a risk factor for reactive aggression. This result was consistent with the previous study finding that anger rumination can predict reactive aggression after a 6 month period ( Wang et al, 2020 ), it also supported and expanded our understanding of the multiple systems model ( Denson, 2013 ). According to the multiple systems model, anger rumination following a provocation increases impulsive aggression and decreases the likelihood of refraining from aggression, which can be due to the failure of self-control ( Denson et al, 2011 ).…”

Proactive vs. Reactive Aggression Within Two Modified Versions of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm

“…In contrast, measuring proactive aggression in laboratory paradigms is more complicated because the paradigm has to elicit instrumental aggression without any sort of provocation. Thus, the majority of studies on proactive aggression only used self-reported questionnaires (e.g., Euler et al, 2017 ; Zhu et al, 2019b ; Wang et al, 2020 ). To measure proactive aggression, a paradigm should capture unprovoked aggressive behaviors, which aim at obtaining a goal such as a reward (instrumental motivation).…”

The longitudinal relation between violence exposure in daily life, hostile automatic thoughts, and cyber‐aggression

“…The link can be explained by the script theory. Frequent fantasizing about how to hurt others (e.g., revenge, physical aggression, and derogation) may increase their motivation of revenge (Wang et al, 2020), which urges people pay more attention to violence events around them to search for the appropriate revenge means. Moreover, hostile automatic thoughts will increase the accessibility of the hostile or aggressive scripts via the constant rehearsal and retrieval, thereby making individuals interpret the environment as more hostile (Huesmann, 2018).…”