The Influence Of Lack Of Emotional Expression And Hostile Attribution Bias On The Aggressiveness Of College Students

Any action intended to cause harm to others may be regarded as an act of aggression.Aggression,which not accepted by the majority,is ubiquitous.The exploration of the cause of aggression has been under discussion for a long time.Recent study showed that alexithymia may be one of the possible factors.Emotions provide the individuals with the necessary information to guide,control and regulate behaviors.However,alexithymia,which means an absence of words for feelings,has difficulties in acquiring,distinguishing,describing,explaining and using the emotion information.Recent studies showed a positive relationship between alexithymia and aggression.However,existing conclusions are mostly based on self-report and are divided.Therefore,basedon the social information processing model and integrated model of emotion processes and cognition in social information processing,the current study conducted several studies with various methods to explore whether alexithymia has an effect on aggression or not,and its boundary conditions.In addition,recent studies showed that the emotional intelligence of chinese college students was positive as a whole,but emotional expression,which is a key factor of emotional intelligence,was weaker.This study also explored the cause of alexithymia by magnetic resonance imaging.There are four studies:Study 1 aimed to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and aggression and the role of hostile attribution bias in this association.Results showed a positive association between alexithymia and proactive aggression,and hostile attribution bias plays a moderate role in this association.Whereas the moderating role of hostile attribution bias in the association between alexithymia and reactive aggression is not significant.Study 2 aimed to investigate the role of alexithymia and hostile attribution bias in the different processing stages of aggressive information.Experiment one aimed to investigate the role of alexithymia and hostile attribution bias in the first stage of aggressive information processing.The results showed that the interaction effects between alexithymia and hostile attribution bias were significant.Experiment two aimed to investigate the role of alexithymia and hostile attribution bias in the intermediate stage of proactive aggressive information processing.The results showed that the interaction effect was significant.Experiment three aimed to investigate the role of alexithymia and hostile attribution bias in the intermediate stage of reactive aggression information processing.The results showed that the interaction effect was not significant.Study 3 aimed to investigate the role of alexithymia and hostile attribution bias in the neural time course of aggressive information processing.Experiment four showed that the interaction effect between alexithymia and hostile attribution bias was significant on the N400 amplitudes of proactive aggression.Experiment five showed that the main effect of alexithymia and its interaction effect with hostile attribution bias were not significant.Study 4 aimed to investigate the neural correlates of alxithymia among Chinese college students.The results showed that alexithymia was positively associated with the volume of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and supplementary motor area.The ventral medial prefrontal cortex was a shared neural base of alexithymia and expressive suppression.In conclusion,this study suggests that alexithymia has a stronger effect on proavtive aggression than on reavtive aggression,and this effect is conditional.Furthermore,higher levels of alexithymia may be related to the habitual use of expressive suppression and the structural abnormality of some brain regions.The present study was conducted with expectation of theoretical guidance for providing more evidence on the behavior intervention and treatment.