Citation

Wilkowski BM, Robinson MD. Person. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 2012; 38(4): 540-553.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0146167211430233

PMID

22215701

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that aggressive individuals exhibit a bias to perceive nonangry expressions as angry. Another line of thinking, however, posits that aggression is a learned response to hostile environments and should be linked to social-cognitive skills suited to such environments. If so, aggressive individuals may exhibit greater perceptual sensitivity to subtle facial cues of anger. Three studies were conducted to test this proposal. In them, participants' ability to discriminate between subtly different intensities of facial anger was tested. Aggressive participants generally displayed greater perceptual sensitivity to subtle cues of facial anger. This pattern could not be explained in terms of response bias and was specific to angry expressions. The results thus support the idea that aggression is associated with social-cognitive skills rather than bias and ineptitude.

Language: en