Narcissism, self-concept clarity and aggressive cognitive bias amongst mentally disordered offenders

Abstract

There is an increased risk of aggression amongst a small proportion of the mentally disordered population. This is not fully explained by illness factors, and both personality and cognitive bias might contribute to aggressive thinking in this sub-population. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between the personality constructs of narcissism and self-concept clarity and aggressively biased cognitive processes and structures (hostile attributions and aggressive social scripts) in a sample of male mentally disordered offenders. Sixty-two participants completed self-report measures of Narcissism and Self-Concept Clarity. Hostile attributions were measured using a scenario paradigm (Social Information Processing-Attribution Emotion Questionnaire) and accessibility of aggressive social scripts through a computerised Stories Task. Poor self-concept clarity was found to be the strongest predictor of hostile attributions and associated with more accessible aggressive social scripts. These findings suggest that it is fragility of self-belief rather than content of those beliefs that is important in predicting aggressive cognitive bias in mentally disordered offenders.

Keywords:

• mentally disordered offenders
• self-concept clarity
• narcissism
• aggressive cognitive bias