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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Physical Aggressiveness And Gray Matter Deficits In Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, David S. Chester, Donald R. Lynam, Richard Milich, C. Nathan Dewall
Physical Aggressiveness And Gray Matter Deficits In Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, David S. Chester, Donald R. Lynam, Richard Milich, C. Nathan Dewall
Psychology Faculty Publications
What causes individuals to hurt others? Since the famous case of Phineas Gage, lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) have been reliably linked to physically aggressive behavior. However, it is unclear whether naturally-occurring deficits in VMPFC, among normal individuals, might have widespread consequences for aggression. Using voxel based morphometry, we regressed gray matter density from the brains of 138 normal female and male adults onto their dispositional levels of physical aggression, verbal aggression, and sex, simultaneously. Physical, but not verbal, aggression was associated with reduced gray matter volume in the VMPFC and to a lesser extent, frontopolar cortex. Participants …
Does The Pain Of Rejection Promote The Pleasure Of Revenge? A Neural Investigation Of Cingulo-Striatal Contributions To Violence, David Chester
Does The Pain Of Rejection Promote The Pleasure Of Revenge? A Neural Investigation Of Cingulo-Striatal Contributions To Violence, David Chester
Theses and Dissertations--Psychology
Aggression is a dynamic and costly feature of human behavior. One reliable cause of aggression is social rejection, though the underlying mechanisms of this effect remain to be fully understood. Previous research has identified two psychological processes that are independently linked to aggressive retaliation: pain and pleasure. Given recent findings that pain magnifies the experience of pleasure, I predicted that the pain of rejection would promote the pleasure of aggression and thus, aggression itself. I also expected that this indirect effect of aggressive pleasure would only be observed among individuals with weaker self-regulatory abilities that are necessary to cope with …