Is It Worthwhile To Attack? The Exploration On The Relationship Between Aggression Outcome Consideration And Proactive Aggression And Evidence From FMRI

Proactive aggression is always defined as any harmful behavior that driven by motivation other than harm the target(such as money,territoriality,etc.),which is always premeditated,well-planned,intentional.As an influencing factor,the cognition of expected outcome was found very important for the forming of proactive aggressive behavior.Based on the domestic and foreign research,the psychological process of defining and measuring the expected results from the macroscopic perspective is not yet conclusive.Therefore,this study combined the previous theories and concepts,and developed the term,aggression outcome consideration,which is aimed to further the theoretical structure of proactive aggression.This research as well used the interference reaction time task(IRT),and manipulates the individual’s aggression outcome consideration through different monetary incentive,so as to explore the connection between the aggression outcome consideration and the proactive aggression.At the same time,due to the lack of related neural imaging research,this study also presented a preliminary exploration on the neurophysiological mechanism underneath.Based on this,the purpose of this study is to address the following issues:(1)whether the monetary incentive is a good manipulation method to manipulate the aggression outcome consideration(Study 1);(2)whether the aggression outcome consideration and proactive aggression would perform differently between different degrees of money incentive,and whether there is a predictive effect from aggression outcome consideration to proactive aggression(Study 1);(3)the brain activation mechanism of the aggression outcome consideration(Study 2);(5)relationship between brain activation of aggression outcome consideration and proactive aggression behavior(Study2).This study consists of two sub-studies.Study 1 used the scenario study technique to explore the relationship between aggression outcome consideration and proactive aggression with IRT task and money incentive as the manipulation.Study2 based on the results of the study 1 was used to verify the underneath brain mechanism of the two terms using the fMRI technology to present a preliminary exploration.Based on two studies,the following conclusions were drawn:(1)Different monetary incentives could manipulate the aggression outcome consideration.Individuals under high incentive,compared to low incentive condition,would perform higher aggression outcome consideration and proactive aggression;(2)The correlation between aggression outcome consideration and proactive aggression is significant and stable.The aggression outcome consideration could be seen as a predictor of proactive aggression.(3)The brain activation of aggression outcome consideration could mainly include lingual gyrus,rectus,middle and inferior temporal gyrus(including negative activation).(4)The brain activation of aggression outcome consideration which could negatively predict proactive aggression mainly located in temporal pole: superior temporal gyrus,lingual gyrus,and rectus.