How sensitivity to provocation shapes encoding and interpretation of ambivalent scenes in an eye tracking study

ABSTRACT

Hostility bias is based on the attribution of intentionality, personality traits such as trait anger and sensitivity to provocation (SP), as well as gender. Eye-tracking studies have shown that, prior to the interpretation of everyday social encounters, people might pay attention to hostile and non-hostile cues differently depending on trait anger; however, little is known about the encoding patterns of individuals sensitive to provocation. We conducted two studies, one of which was on interpretation and the other on encoding. Study 1 (N = 75) found that people low in SP gazed significantly longer at non-hostile cues than at hostile cues. Study 2 (N = 197, 84 men) revealed a significant interaction for judgment of intentionality in ambiguous scenes between gender and both SP and trait-anger; SP, trait anger and intentionality were negatively related in females, whereas in males they were positively related, although the relationships themselves (simple effects) were non-significant.

KEYWORDS:

• Sensitivity to provocation
• hostile attributions
• interpretation
• encoding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Conflict of interest

We declare that our studies adhere to the ethical guidelines specified in the APA Code of Conduct as well as our national ethics guidelines, specifically that our research was conducted ethically, results were reported honestly, the submitted work is original and not (self)plagiarised, and authorship reflects individuals’ contributions.

Data used in this study will be stored at: http://www.apsycholab.pl.

Notes

1 A precise description of AOI for hostile, non-hostile and ambivalent scenes was received from Wilkowski et al. (2007).

Additional information

Funding

The studies were founded by Narodowe Centrum Nauki [grant number UMO-2017/26/D/HS6/00258].