Learning to keep your cool: Reducing aggression through the experimental modification of cognitive control

Abstract

Prior research suggests that recruiting cognitive control resources following exposure to hostile stimuli may allow individuals to more effectively override their aggressive urges. In the current study, a cognitive modification procedure was developed to encourage participants to perform this cognitive operation. It successfully encouraged cognitive control recruitment following hostile primes. More importantly, this procedure allowed individuals prone to hostile attributions to override their aggressive urges. Interestingly, it also led to a slight increase in aggression at low levels of hostile attributions. Discussion focused on theoretical and practical implications of the hypothesised effect, as well as possible explanations for the non-hypothesised effect.

Keywords:

• Aggression
• Anger
• Cognitive control
• Cognitive bias modification
• Hostile attributions

Notes

¹ The Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992), the Displaced Aggression Questionnaire (Denson, Pedersen, & Miller, 2006), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John 2003) and the trait anger subscale of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Spielberger, 1988) were administered for exploratory purposes. Unlike hostile attributions, none of these scales measures an automatic process involved in anger elicitation. Thus, none provides a clear test of the hypothesis.