Effects Of Oxytocin On Human Aggression, Joseph L. Alcorn Iii

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

EFFECTS OF OXYTOCIN ON HUMAN AGGRESSION

Joseph Louis Alcorn III, B.S.

Advisory Professor: Scott D. Lane, Ph.D.

Human interaction is comprised of common, yet complex, behaviors and the outcomes of these social behaviors can beneficially or detrimentally impact individual and public health. One social behavior that can have profound detrimental outcomes is aggression. Aggression is a class of social behavior that is particularly prevalent in individuals with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and comorbid substance use disorder (SUD). Aggression in these individuals can manifest at maladaptive levels that place considerable burdens on public health and communities. Therefore, understanding the neurobehavioral underpinnings …

The Structure Of Child And Adolescent Aggression: Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of A Brief Peer Conflict Scale, Justin Russell

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The importance of simultaneous consideration of forms and functions in youth measures of aggressive behavior is well established. Competing models have presented these highly interrelated constructs as either independent (e.g., reactive or overt) or paired factors (e.g., reactive and overt). The current study examines these models in the context of assessing the viability of a new self-report measure, the Peer Conflict Scale – 20 Item Version. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on PCS 20 responses from 1,048 school-age youth living in the Gulf Coast region. Both models significantly improved upon one or two-factor alternatives, and demonstrated partial invariance across gender …

The Temporal Association Between Alcohol, Negative Affect, And Dating Violence, Ryan Christopher Shorey

Doctoral Dissertations

Dating violence is a serious problem, with psychological aggression being the most common topography of aggression. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research on temporal risk factors for psychological aggression perpetration and victimization. Thus, the proposed study examined whether alcohol and negative affect increased the odds of psychological aggression perpetration and victimization, and whether these two risk factors interacted to temporally predict aggression. That is, consistent with the Attention-Allocation Model (AAM), it was hypothesized that at high levels of negative affect, acute alcohol consumption would increase the odds of aggression. However, at low levels of negative affect, acute alcohol consumption …

Normative Feedback, Levels Of Narcissism, And Student Evaluations Of A Lecture, Shirley Ann Hodges

Dissertations

Individuals who have narcissistic traits have a tendency to behave more aggressively in both indirect and direct ways, especially when confronted with negative feedback that threatens their self-esteem. Little is known about how trait-level individual differences affect aggression for people who have narcissistic tendencies. Among adults, where direct confrontation is generally discouraged, aggression may be difficult to detect. Rational-appearing aggression is used in the workplace, generally by supervisors toward employees. In some environments, however, including academic environments, 360o feedback is prevalent, with faculty grading student performance and students evaluating faculty in the form of course evaluations. Faculty are held accountable …

Environmental Context And Aggression: An Experimental Demonstration Of The Role Of Alcohol Expectancies, Brynn E. Sheehan

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Research has extensively investigated predictors of alcohol-related aggression. Alcohol expectancy theory suggests that the link between alcohol and aggression may be related to one's beliefs regarding the expected effects of alcohol on aggression. As such, research has found that exposure to a bar environment may elicit alcohol-related aggression expectancies (Wall, McKee, & Hinson, 2000; Wall, McKee, Hinson, & Goldstein, 2001). Additionally, aggression expectancies have shown to predict direct aggression, such as hitting or yelling (Leonard, Collins, & Quigley, 2003; Smucker Barnwell, Borders, & Earlywine, 2006). While these research studies have shown separately that alcohol cues elicit aggression expectancies, and that …

Effects Of Alcohol Intoxication And Neurocognitive Processing On Intimate Partner Aggression, Rosalita C. Maldonado

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Intimate partner aggression (IPA) is a serious public health concern that occurs with alarming frequency, results in both physical and psychological harm to victims, and costs billions of dollars per year due to healthcare costs and loss of productivity. These adverse consequences highlight the need to understand risk factors of IPA perpetration. Attempts to identify these risk factors have focused mostly on broad factors that may predispose someone to perpetrate aggression, including individual demographic and dispositional characteristics (e.g., low socioeconomic status, psychopathy). Although valuable, this knowledge cannot reveal the specific circumstances that may prompt an individual to perpetrate aggression against …

Motivations For Targeted School Violence: Examining The Influence Of Social Rejection And Violent Video Games On Aggression, Maxwell R. Christensen

Honors Scholar Theses

This Thesis Project investigates putative causes for mass-casualty violence in America’s schools. Both popular and scientific literatures suggest a variety of factors to explain these events, including violence in media such as movies and video games, gun culture, social constructions of masculinity, as well as social isolation, rejection, and disaffection among youth. Whereas such factors are not present in every incidence of mass violence and have yet to be demonstrated as explicitly causal variables, significant evidence points to social rejection in the form of bullying experiences and consumption of violent media such as first-person-shooter video games as representing key driving …

The Role Of Extrinsic Orientation In The Relation Between Adolescent Narcissism And Problem Behaviors, Drew A. Leggett

Honors Theses

The present study examined the moderating effects of academic and religious motivational orientations on the relation between adolescent narcissism and delinquency and aggression. It was hypothesized that adolescent narcissism would be significantly correlated with extrinsic orientation in religion and academics. In addition, it was expected that participants who reported high levels of adolescent narcissism and extrinsic motivation would report the highest levels of delinquency and proactive aggression and that an intrinsic orientation would mitigate this relationship. Data were acquired through the self-report surveys of 143 adolescents (111 males, 32 females), ranging in age from 16 to 19 (M = …

The Influence Of Bystanders In Subsequent Bullying Behavior, Jenny Lane Morris

Dissertations

Aggression that is targeted towards an individual or a group of individuals who is at a disadvantage to respond is known by several terms in the literature, including bullying, harassment, and mobbing. There has been much interest in this sort of targeted aggression among school-aged children and, therefore, a large body of literature on the topic exists. In adult populations, especially in workplace environments, much research has focused on the respective roles of the victim and bully in this adverse social dynamic, with less information available on the role of the bystander, which has emerged as an important part of …

Maternal Health And Child Behaviors As Risk Factors For Child Injury, Christina J. Nicolais

Theses and Dissertations

Evidence suggests that child behavior, parent mental health, parent supervision, and home environment conditions impact a child’s risk of injury. Vulnerable families are at greater risk for the occurrence of child behavior problems, poor health, decreased supervision, and hazardous home conditions. Consistent with a model that proposes that parent, child, and environment factors interact within the lens of sociocultural factors to predict injury, the current study aimed to test a statistical model with maternal physical health and child externalizing behaviors as predictors of child injury, and home hazards and supervision as mediators of these relations. Analyses were conducted using a …

The Effect Of Aggressive And Prosocial Video Games On Aggressive And Prosocial Behavior, Valerie L. Scelsa

Senior Theses and Projects

The relationship between video games and aggressive and prosocial behavior has been a topic of special interest for psychologists, as it may have important implications for society. Research has suggested that violent video games increase aggressive behavior, and prosocial video games increase prosocial behavior (Adachi, Good and Willoughby, 2012; Brauer, Greitemeyer and Osswald, 2010). However, the literature on aggressive behavior is somewhat conflicting and the research on prosocial behavior is relatively recent. Therefore, the current study aimed to fill in some of the gaps in the current literature by examining the effect of prosocial and aggressive video games on prosocial …

The Role Of Social Information Processing In The Relation Between Interparental Conflict And Child Aggression, Kimberly Parker

Theses and Dissertations

Crick and Dodge’s SIP theoretical model proposes that children use previously stored memories, past experiences, and formed representations that influence six mechanisms that are in turn used in deciding how to act in social situations (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Research has demonstrated a strong link between social information processing (SIP) and child aggression. Furthermore, SIP has been shown to mediate the relation between several parenting practices and child aggression. Research has also shown a strong relation between interparental conflict and child aggression. The focus of the current study was to determine if SIP serves as a mediator between parental conflict …

The Brief Aggression Questionnaire: Psychometric And Behavioral Evidence For An Efficient Measure Of Trait Aggression, Gregory D. Webster, C. Nathan Dewall, Richard S. Pond, Timothy Deckman, Peter K. Jonason, Bonnie M. Le, Austin Lee Nichols, Tatiana Orozco Schember, E. Layne Paddock

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

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 Questionnaire's (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-Construal Moderates Testosterone Reactivity To Competitive Outcomes, Keith Welker

Wayne State University Dissertations

Previous research shows that testosterone reactivity to competitive outcomes predicts aggressive behavior in men. However, some studies have failed to find these effects, and it has been suggested that individual differences moderate the relationships between competitive outcomes, testosterone fluctuations, and aggressive behavior. The current research examined whether one individual difference--self-construal--would moderate these effects. In Study 1, participants were assigned to win or lose a competitive video game and engaged in a reactive aggression task. Results indicated that increases in testosterone in response to winning and decreases in response to losing occurred in men with independent, not interdependent, self-construals. These changes …

Hazardous Alcohol Use And Intimate Partner Aggression Among Dating Couples: The Role Of Impulse Control Difficulties, Laura E. Watkins, Rosalita C. Maldonado, David Dilillo

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

To date, research identifying moderators of the alcohol–intimate partner aggression (IPA) relation-ship has focused almost exclusively on male‐perpetrated aggression, without accounting for the dy-adic processes of IPA. The current study examined hazardous alcohol use and impulse control diffi-culties as predictors of IPA among a sample of 73 heterosexual dating couples. Both actor and partner effects of these risk factors on physical and psychological aggression were examined. Results indi-cated that impulse control difficulties were an important actor and partner predictor of both physical and psychological aggression. Findings supported the multiple threshold model such that the inter-action between impulse control difficulties and …

Peer Victimization And Child Physical Health: The Moderating Role Of Pessimism, Tori R. Van Dyk, Timothy D. Nelson

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Objective—Involvement in peer victimization has been associated with numerous negative consequences, including poor physical health. The purpose of this study is to improve on previous research evaluating the victimization– health relationship by examining the health (i.e., health-related quality of life [HRQoL], medical service utilization) of both victims and aggressors and examining individual variation in this relationship through the moderating effect of pessimism.

Method—Sample included 125 ethnically diverse youth aged 8–11 years recruited from a low-income medical practice. Child-report of involvement in peer victimization and pessimism was assessed along with parent-report of HRQoL. 2-year medical service utilization was extracted from medical …

Australian Psychologists' Perceptions And Experiences Of Client Threats, Penny Hyde

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

There is empirical evidence that workplace violence is increasing, particularly in settings where health care professionals such as psychologists are employed, and often these incidents are perpetrated by clients. Given that client violence can have wide ranging and serious consequences, it is not surprising that researchers are focussing on this issue. One notable finding is that psychologists feel that they do not have the training or confidence to manage the violent behaviour of clients. A review of the relevant literature was undertaken to determine why psychologists feel ill prepared for such incidents. Whilst there is a wide range of definitions …

Friend Or Foe: The Effect Of Shared Group Status On Aggressiveness And Testosterone In Response To Provocation, Eric William Fuller

Wayne State University Dissertations

Previous research has found that individuals display behavioral and hormonal differences when engaged in competition with natural and experimental ingroup and outgroup members. The current work expands on this line of research by examining the impact of shared group status on reactive aggression in response to provocation. Using a previously validated measure of reactive aggression, participants were provoked by and given a chance to aggress on to either a racial ingroup or outgroup member. Participants also provided saliva samples to allow for monitoring changes in testosterone. It was hypothesized that behavioral aggression would be predicted by changes in testosterone and …

Self-Reported Strengths And Weaknesses In The Prediction Of Institutional Aggression, Sarah A. Demarco

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Aggression on inpatient psychiatric units poses a multitude of issues not only for patients, but also for staff. Thus, the identification of dynamic risk factors that may increase and also of protective factors that may decrease the likelihood of a patient becoming aggressive is important. The current study sought to expand on the current literature by examining if there is a difference between self-perceived strengths and risk factors between aggressive and nonaggressive patients. More specifically, it was hypothesized that self-reported strengths would moderate the relationship between self-reported risk factors and institutional aggression (IA) in forensic and in civil psychiatric units …