دانلود رایگان مقاله حقایقی در مورد خشونت: روانشناسی خصلت خشم

Abstract

Some people are more prone to aggression than others. These individual differences are associated with trait anger, a personality dimension that relates to the frequency, intensity, and duration with which people experience angry feelings. Trait anger is an important antecedent of state anger and aggression. People with high trait anger tend to perceive situations as hostile and are less capable of controlling their hostile thoughts and feelings. Moreover, people with high trait anger display heightened approach motivation in threatening situations. This reactive approach motivation may be countered by avoidance states, which may reduce anger among high trait-anger people. Insights into the underlying processes of trait anger may be used to combat human aggression.

Conclusions and Outlook

In recent years, scientists have made considerable advances in unraveling the psychology of trait anger. A visual summary of the major research findings on trait anger is provided by Figure 1. Self-report measures of trait anger predict situational angry feelings and aggression in both everyday life and well-controlled laboratory studies. Trait anger has been linked to cognitive biases, such as reduced capacity for effortful control, which lead high trait anger people to quickly perceive their surroundings as hostile. Finally, high trait anger is linked to increased approach motivation, especially in threatening situations. So far, the cognitive and motivational processes associated with trait anger have been investigated independently. However, the distinction between motivation and cognition is somewhat artificial, given that motivation and cognition are known to interact continuously [45]. Such motivation-cognition interactions are likely to be important in trait anger. Indeed, ground-breaking studies have shown that anger-related approach motivation leads to perceptional and conceptual narrowing of attention *[46]. More research along these lines will be needed to unravel the interplay of motivation and cognition in trait anger.