Timothy Deckman

So far away from one's partner, yet so close to romantic alternatives: avoidant attachment, interest in alternatives, and infidelity.

Temptation pervades modern social life, including the temptation to engage in infidelity. The present investigation examines one factor that may put individuals at a greater risk of being unfaithful to their partner: dispositional avoidant attachment style. The authors hypothesize that avoidantly attached people may be less resistant to temptations for infidelity due to lower levels of commitment in romantic relationships. This hypothesis was confirmed in 8 studies. People with high, vs. low, levels of dispositional avoidant attachment had more permissive attitudes toward infidelity (Study 1), showed attentional bias toward attractive alternative partners (Study 2), expressed greater daily interest in meeting alternatives to their current relationship partner (Study 5), perceived alternatives to their current relationship partner more positively (Study 6), and engaged in more infidelity over time (Studies 3, 4, 7, and 8). This effect was mediated by lower levels of commitment (Studies 5-8). Thus, avoidant attachment predicted a broad spectrum of responses indicative of interest in alternatives and propensity to engage in infidelity, which were mediated by low levels of commitment.

Sweetened blood cools hot tempers: physiological self-control and aggression

Aggressive and violent behaviors are restrained by self-control. Self-control consumes a lot of glucose in the brain, suggesting that low glucose and poor glucose metabolism are linked to aggression and violence. Four studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 found that participants who consumed a glucose beverage behaved less aggressively than did participants who consumed a placebo beverage. Study 2 found an indirect relationship between diabetes (a disorder marked by low glucose levels and poor glucose metabolism) and aggressiveness through low self-control. Study 3 found that states with high diabetes rates also had high violent crime rates. Study 4 found that countries with high rates of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (a metabolic disorder related to low glucose levels) also had higher killings rates, both war related and non-war related. All four studies suggest that a spoonful of sugar helps aggressive and violent behaviors go down.

The Brief Aggression Questionnaire: Psychometric and Behavioral Evidence for an Efficient Measure of Trait Aggression

A key problem facing aggression research is how to measure individual differences in aggression accurately and efficiently without sacrificing reliability or validity. Researchers are increasingly demanding brief measures of aggression for use in applied settings, field studies, pretest screening, longitudinal, and daily diary studies. The authors selected the three highest loading items from each of the Aggression Questionnaires (Buss & Perry, 1992) four subscales--Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, anger, and hostility--and developed an efficient 12-item measure of aggression--the Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ). Across five studies (N = 3,996), the BAQ showed theoretically consistent patterns of convergent and discriminant validity with other self-report measures, consistent four-factor structures using factor analyses, adequate recovery of information using item response theory methods, stable test-retest reliability, and convergent validity with behavioral measures of aggression. The authors discuss the reliability, validity, and efficiency of the BAQ, along with its many potential applications.

Belongingness as a Core Personality Trait: How Social Exclusion Influences Social Functioning and Personality Expression

People have a fundamental need for positive and lasting relationships. This need to belong is rooted in evolutionary history and gave rise to the development of traits that enable individuals to gain acceptance and to avoid rejection. Because belongingness is a core component of human functioning, social exclusion should influence many cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes and personality expression. This article summarizes recent evidence that social exclusion causes an assortment of outcomes, many of which depend on whether the excluded can gain acceptance or forestall possible distress. It highlights common overlap in physical and social pain systems and how a physical painkiller can reduce the pain of social exclusion. Finally, it shows how social exclusion moderates the effects of traits on cognition, emotion, and behavior. To appreciate personality processes in social contexts, scientists should consider how people respond to social exclusion and how the need to belong influences personality expression.

The Brief Aggression Questionnaire: Reliability, validity, and structure

A key problem facing aggression research is how to measure individual differences in aggression accurately and efficiently without sacrificing reliability or validity. Researchers are increasingly demanding brief measures of aggression for use in applied settings, field studies, pretest screening, longitudinal, and daily diary studies. The authors selected the three highest loading items from each of the Aggression Questionnaires (Buss & Perry, 1992) four subscales--Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, anger, and hostility--and developed an efficient 12-item measure of aggression--the Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ). Across five studies (N = 3,996), the BAQ showed theoretically consistent patterns of convergent and discriminant validity with other self-report measures, consistent four-factor structures using factor analyses, adequate recovery of information using item response theory methods, stable test-retest reliability, and convergent validity with behavioral measures of aggression. The authors discuss the reliability, validity, and efficiency of the BAQ, along with its many potential applications.

Repulsed by violence: disgust sensitivity buffers trait, behavioral, and daily aggression.

Many models of aggression include negatively valenced emotions as common elicitors of aggressive behavior. Yet, the motivational direction of these emotions is not taken into account. The current work explored whether sensitivity to a negative emotion associated with behavioral avoidance-disgust-will predict lower levels of aggression. Five studies tested the hypothesis that disgust sensitivity predicts less aggression. In Study 1 (N = 92), disgust sensitivity predicted less trait physical and verbal aggression. In Study 2 (N = 268), participants high in disgust sensitivity were less likely to behave aggressively towards a stranger on a reaction-time task. In Study 3 (N = 51), disgust sensitivity was associated with less intimate partner violence inclinations. Study 4 (N = 247) replicated this effect longitudinally. In Study 5 (N = 166), each domain of disgust (i.e., moral, sexual, and pathogen disgust) had a buffering effect on daily aggression when daily experiences activated those specific domains. These results highlight the usefulness of considering the motivational direction of an emotion when examining its influence on aggression.

The Brief Aggression Questionnaire: Structure, Validity, Reliability, and Generalizability.

In contexts that increasingly demand brief self-report measures (e.g., experience sampling, longitudinal and field studies), researchers seek succinct surveys that maintain reliability and validity. One such measure is the 12-item Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ; Webster et al., 2014), which uses 4 3-item subscales: Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility. Although prior work suggests the BAQs scores are reliable and valid, we addressed some lingering concerns. Across 3 studies (N = 1,279), we found that the BAQ had a 4-factor structure, possessed long-term test–retest reliability across 12 weeks, predicted differences in behavioral aggression over time in a laboratory experiment, generalized to a diverse nonstudent sample, and showed convergent validity with a displaced aggression measure. In addition, the BAQs 3-item Anger subscale showed convergent validity with a trait anger measure. We discuss the BAQs potential reliability, validity, limitations, and uses as an efficient measure of aggressive traits.

Brief Report: Evidence of Ingroup Bias on the Shooter Task in a Saudi Sample

When predominantly White participants in Western countries are asked to shoot individuals in a computer game who may carry weapons, they show a greater bias to shoot at outgroup members and people stereotyped as dangerous. The goal was to determine the extent to which shooter biases in the Middle East would vary as a function of target ethnicity and culturally appropriate or inappropriate headgear. Within a sample of 37 male Saudi Arabian residents, we examined shooter biases outside of Western nations for the first time. Targets in this task were either White or Middle Eastern in appearance, and wore either American style baseball caps or a Saudi Arabian style shemagh and igal. Our results replicated the bias to shoot racial outgroup members observed in Western samples; we found a bias to shoot White over Middle Eastern targets. Unexpectedly, we also found a bias for Saudi participants to shoot at people wearing culturally appropriate traditional Saudi headgear over Western style baseball caps. To explain this latter finding, we cautiously speculate that relative perceptions of dangerousness in the Middle East may be influenced by media exposure and changing social conditions in the region.