Citation

Liu X, Liu X. Pers. Individ. Dif. 2021; 172: e110585.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.paid.2020.110585

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The relation between extraversion (E) and reactive aggression (RA) was unclear due to the complex nature of extraversion. Social desirability (SD) always contaminates the personality scales by weakening the predictive power of personality traits. This study discovered the suppression effect of SD in influencing the relation between E and RA through testing the mediation effect of SD within the framework of structural equation modeling.

RESULTS showed that SD, serving as a suppressor, carried out the negative association between E and RA. There was a statistically significant positive relationship between E and RA after controlling the effect of SD. It can be concluded that SD is a suppressor which can separate the mixed association between E and RA. The shared variances of social desirability and extraversion can explain the negative relation between extraversion and reactive aggression, which indicates that extraverts may hide their tendency of aggression due to the social desirability. After teasing out the effect of SD, the purified relation between E and RA would be shown: extraverts incline to have a higher level of reactive aggression.

Language: en

Keywords

Aggression; Extraversion; Social desirability; Suppression effect