Cognition and Violence

Eckhardt, C. & Jamison, T. R. (2002). Articulated theoughts of male dating violence perpetrators during anger arousal. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 26, 289-308. ABSTRACT - The cognitive correlates of anger arousal and dating violence were investigated in samples of 17 males who reported at least one incident of physical aggression toward a female dating partner (DV), and 16 males who reported a nonviolent interaction history with their dating partners (NV). Participants performed the Articulates Thoughts during Simulated Situations (ATSS) paradigm while listening to anger-arousing audiotapes. Trained raters coded participants' thought articulations for irrational beliefs, cognitive biases, hostile attributional biases, hostile attributional biases, and anger control statements. Results indicated that DV men articulated significantly more irrational thoughts and cognitive biases, but fewer anger control statements, than NV men during ATSS anger arousal. Logistic regression alalyses indicated that specific ATSS cognitive variables (high Arbitrary Inference, high Demandingness, low Anger Control) discriminated between the groups. However, fewer violent-nonviolent differences were observed on paper-and-pencil measures of cognitive distortion. These data suggest that assessment of cognitive processing among violent individuals may be optimized if these cognitions are assessed during concurrent anger arousal. The findings are interpreted in the context of social learning and social information processing theories of partner violence.

Rayburn, N. R. & Davison, G. C. (2002). Articulated thoughts about antigay hate crimes. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 26, 431-447. ABSTRACT - This study employed the articulated thoughts in simulated situations (ATSS) paradigm in the investigation of college students' thoughts upon confrontation to commit a sexual-orientation-based hate crime versus a nonbias crime. In a between-subjects experimental design, participants were exposed to an audiotaped scenario depicting either the planning of a hate crime or a comparable nonhate crime. Content analysis of participants' articulated thoughts in response to these stimuli revealed that the hate crimeresulted in more intentions to physically aggress against the perpetrator. This supports the notion that hate crimes have a greater potential than other crimes to lead to future violence. More people were also willing to intervene and help the hate crime victim than the nonhate crime victim. In addition, antigay attitudes turned out to be predictive of anger against the hate crime victim, and support of the hate crime perpetrators. Implications of these findings, as well as suggestions for future research, are discussed.

Replies:

Violence in Youth: Behavior Therapy's Response, by Jim Pretzer, 11/23/02

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