Beliefs About Aggression and Submissiveness: A Comparison of Aggressive and Nonaggressive Individuals with Mild Intellectual Disability

Abstract

Recent research has examined the relevance of the social information processing model of aggression to individuals with intellectual disability (ID). This study investigated the “response access” and “response decision” steps of this model. Photo stories were used to compare aggressive and nonaggressive individuals' beliefs about the outcomes of responding aggressively and submissively in situations of interpersonal conflict. Coding of participants' open-ended answers indicated that aggressive individuals anticipated that aggressive responses would result in more favorable outcomes than their nonaggressive peers. The aggressive participants also made more negative evaluations of submissive responses. These findings have important implications for the assessment and treatment of aggression with people who have mild ID.

KEYWORDS:

• aggression
• beliefs
• social information processing
• intellectual disability
• outcome expectancy