The Relationship Between Interpersonal Openness And Reactive Aggression In Junior High School Students: The Mediating Role Of Hostile Attribution Bias

Reactive aggression refers to a kind of defensive and retaliatory aggressive response to experienced and perceived provocation(i.e.external hostile environment,such as threat or frustration,etc.).Adolescence is also an exploding period of reactive aggression,reactive aggression occurs frequently in the adolescent group,which is difficult to predict,and it may lead to more serious consequences.Thus,it has aroused widespread concern from all walks of life.Negative personality traits,as an important factor affecting reactive aggressive behavior,have been concerned by researchers all the time.However,this study believes that studying the defense mechanism of positive personality traits on reactive aggression is more meaningful,and is more conducive to the overall development of junior high school students;few studies explored the relationship between the positive personality traits(such as agreeable,Honesty–Humility,etc.)and reactive aggression,and the results of these studies were not consistent,which did not really understand the internal mechanisms.Besides,these personality traits are derived from the Western culture,which may not fully cover and explain the Chinese personality traits.For example,the Big Five personality,which is very similar to the interpersonal traits in this study,does not include the important interpersonal traits such as loyalty,contingency and acceptance in Chinese culture.Therefore,it is more necessary to explore the influence of Chinese pro-social personality traits on reactive aggression.Hereby,this study took interpersonal openness as personality variable,which is one kind of the positive interpersonal trait based on the traditional culture of China,and investigated the effects of interpersonal openness on reactive aggression and the underlying mechanisms through three studies.Currently,no relevant scales could measure the interpersonal openness and hostile attribution bias of Chinese middle school students,Study1 respectively revised two questionnaires for middle school students,namely Interpersonal Self-Support Scale for Middle School Students(Study1a)and Word Sentence Association Paradigm—Hostility(Study1b).Study 1a conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 junior middle school students on the basis of the original questionnaire,modified and collated the original questionnaire to form the interpersonal self-support scale of middle school students,and then tested the reliability and validity of the questionnaire twice,which collected sample1(498 valid questionnaires,including 240 male students and 258 female students)and sample 2(516valid questionnaires,including 260 male students and 253 female students).Sample 1 was mainly used for item analysis and exploratory factors analysis,sample 2 was used for confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis.Consistent with the research method of Study 1a,Study 1b also obtained two samples,sample 1(385 valid questionnaires,including 194 male students and 189 female students)and sample 2(349 valid questionnaires,including 168 male students and 181 female students).The results of item analysis,reliability analysis,factor analysis confirmed the five-factor model of Interpersonal Self-Support Scale for Middle School Students and the one-factor model of Word Sentence Association Paradigm—Hostility,which meet the criteria of psychometrics.Hence,they could be used to measure interpersonal self-support and hostility attribution bias of Chinese middle school students.Study 2 explored the longitudinal relationship between interpersonal openness and reactive aggression.The sample of 280 middle school students(including 128 male students and 138 female students)were asked to fill in the Interpersonal Openness Subscale and Reactive Aggression Subscale two times.Two surveys were conducted at a nine-month interval There were no common method biases for the two tests of Study 2.The results of the cross-lagged saturation model of interpersonal openness and reactive showed that the model fit well,?~2/df=0.00,CFI=1.00,TLI=1.00,RMSEA=0.00,SRMR=0.00.Interpersonal openness could predict reactive aggression cross time(?=-0.12,p<0.05).On the basis of Study2,Study3a and Study3b deeply explored the internal mechanism between interpersonal openness and reactive aggression,and introduced the cognitive variable of hostility attribution bias.In Study 3a,the sample of 516 middle school students(including 260 male students and 253 female students),filled out Interpersonal Openness Subscale,Word Sentence Association Paradigm—Hostility and Reactive Aggression subscale.Study 3b recruited 72 middle students(including 38 male students and 34 female students)to take part in the experiment.Participants filled Interpersonal Openness Subscale,State Anger Scale and Hostile Scale before the experiment,then entered the formal experimental phase(modified reactive aggression paradigm),filled State Anger Scale and Hostile Scale during and after the experiment.Both studies have shown that hostile attribution bias plays a mediating role between interpersonal openness and reactive aggression.The results of the latent variable mediation model of Study3a(using Mplus7.0)supported that hostile attribution bias may play a mediating role between interpersonal openness and reactive aggression in daily life.The specific indicators were as follows:there were no common method biases.the structural model(?~2/df=1.56,RMSEA=0.03,CFI=0.99,CFI=0.98,SRMR=0.03,RMSEA 90%confidence interval=[0.02,0.05])fit well.Interpersonal openness significantly negatively predicts hostile Attribution bias(?=-0.50,p<0.001,95%confidence interval=[-0.59,-0.40])and reactive aggression(?=-0.50,p<0.001,95%confidence interval=[-0.61,-0.37]);hostile attribution bias significantly positively predicts reactive aggression(?=0.29,p<0.001,95%confidence interval=[0.16,0.40]).The experimental results still supported the mediating effect of hostile attribution bias(in Study3b).We used the PROCESS macro to obtain a full mediation model based on a bias-corrected nonparametric percentile Bootstrap method,which showed that the mediation effect model was significant,interpersonal openness could significantly negatively predict hostile Attribution bias(b=-0.58,SE=0.19,t=-3.05,p<0.01,95%confidence interval=[-0.96,-0.20]),hostile attribution bias significantly positively predicted reactive aggression(b=0.71,SE=0.10,t=7.14,p<0.001,95%confidence interval=[0.51,0.91]),the total effect value was-0.42,the total indirect effect value was-0.42,and the Bootstrap95%confidence interval of the total indirect effect did not span 0(95%CI[-0.78,-0.14]).In summary,the conclusions of this study were as follows:(1)Study1 respectively revised two questionnaires for middle school students,namely Interpersonal Self-Support Scale for Middle School Students(Study1a)and Word Sentence Association Paradigm—Hostility(Study1b),which met the criteria of psychometrics.(2)The results of the cross-lagged saturation model of interpersonal openness and reactive showed that interpersonal openness could predict reactive aggression cross time(Study2).(3)Hostile attribution bias played a mediating role between interpersonal openness and reactive aggression.In particular,in daily life,interpersonal openness indirectly predicted reactive aggression through hostile attribution bias(Study 3a);at the same time,in the ambiguous hostility experimental context,different interpersonal openness individuals firstly evaluated hostile intentions of others,and then decided whether to adopt reactive aggression(Study 3b).The results of this study showed that there was a stable negative predictive relationship between interpersonal openness and reactive aggressive,and hostility attribution bias played a mediating role.This study focused on the mechanism of the reactive aggression of Chinese middle school students,and initially explored the influence of an indigenous defensive personality trait of China(that is,interpersonal openness)and cognitive mechanisms(that is,hostile attribution bias)on reactive aggression,which expanded the theory of self-support personality and developed the studies of personality and aggression.