Violence Exposure, Aggressive Cognitions & Externalizing Behaviors among Colombian Youth: The Moderating Role of Community Belongingness

Limited work has focused on understanding mechanisms through which violence negatively impacts youth outcomes. The present study investigates how three different facets of violence exposure (witnessing violence, victimization and armed conflict) relate to Colombian youth externalizing behaviors via the indirect influence of aggressive cognitions and the moderating role of community belongingness. Data were from a sample of students ( N = 3,483) in public high schools in Colombia. Findings indicated all three facets of violence were positively associated with youth externalizing behaviors. Armed conflict and witnessing community violence positively predicted externalizing behaviors via the indirect effect of aggressive cognitions. Community belongingness moderated the association between armed conflict and witnessing on aggressive cognitions. Results highlight the need for understanding risk and protective factors from a contextual lens. The role of community belongingness as a resilience factor is discussed, as such it has implications for intervention programs targeting youth at greater risk to violence exposure.

Cognitive and Affective Mediators of Alcohol-Facilitated Intimate-Partner Aggression

In this multisite study, we examined whether aggressive cognitions and facial displays of negative affect and anger experienced during provocation mediated the association between alcohol intoxication and intimate-partner aggression (IPA). Participants were 249 heavy drinkers (148 men, 101 women) with a recent history of IPA perpetration. Participants were randomly assigned to an alcohol or no-alcohol control-beverage condition and completed a shock-based aggression task involving apparent provocation by their intimate partner. During provocation, a hidden camera recorded participants’ facial expressions and verbal articulations, which were later coded using the Facial Action Coding System and the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations paradigm. Results indicated that the positive association between alcohol intoxication and partner-directed physical aggression was mediated by participants’ aggressive cognitions but not by negative affect or anger facial expressions. These findings implicate aggressogenic cognitions as a mediating mechanism underlying the association between the acute effects of alcohol and IPA perpetration.

The Association Between Sexually Aggressive Cognitions and Pathological Personality Traits in Men

Sexual aggression, harassment, and sexually aggressive cognitions (victim blaming, sexual entitlement) are serious societal problems. Although research has examined attributes of individuals who engage in overt sexual assault, few studies have focused on individual characteristics of those who perpetuate problematic negative beliefs surrounding sexual assault. This study sought to examine the relationship between pathological personality and sexually aggressive cognitions among 242 community men. Results showed that traits including antagonism, disinhibition, and negative affectivity were associated with sexually aggressive cognitions. These results have implications for understanding sexual aggression and the role personality plays in perpetuating sexually aggressive attitudes.

Why Social Threat Motivates Malevolent Creativity

History is rife with examples of the dark side of creativity—ingenious weapons, novel torture practices, and creative terrorist attacks—yet its psychological origins are sparsely addressed and poorly understood. Building on work showing that social threat induces focused thinking as well as aggressive cognitions and readiness to fight, we propose that threats lead to more malevolent creativity and less creativity in threat-irrelevant domains. Prisoner’s dilemma games were modified to evoke threat of exploitation. Participants then generated novel brick uses (Study 1, N = 113) or negotiation tactics (Study 2; N = 79). High (vs. low) social threat led to more “malevolent” creativity (e.g., using bricks as weapons; using intimidation as negotiation tactic). Social threat reduced nonthreat-related creative ideation only in Study 1. Study 2 showed that the increase of malevolent creativity was due to the motivation to defend and aggress, and emerged especially among individuals with a high need for cognition.

Heat-Aggression Association-AMP

Previous research has asserted that individuals hold cognitive associations between the constructs of hot temperatures and aggression (e.g., DeWall & Bushman, 2009). However, subsequent studies have cast doubt on whether these previously-used methods reliably produce effects that support this assertion (e.g., McCarthy, 2014). Thus, the evidence for the existence of a cognitive heat-aggression association is mixed. To test for this hypothetical association using a different method, and to address shortcomings in the previously-used methods, the current studies used a modified Affect Misattribution Procedure (e.g., Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005) to examine whether exposure to heat-related words increased the accessibility of aggressive cognitions. Both a pilot study and a Registered Report showed that exposure to heat-related words increased the accessibility of aggressive cognitions. However, exposure to cold-related words also, and unexpectedly, increased the accessibility of aggressive cognitions. And these results were only found for participants who reported that the primes influenced their Misattribution Task performance. Thus, although the current results found that exposure to heat-related stimuli caused theoretically-predicted effects, the overall evidence is somewhat mixed as to whether this is due to a cognitive association between hot temperatures and aggression.