The Independent and Combined Roles of Attentional and Interpretative Biases in Antisocial Behavior, Trait Aggression and Aggressive Responses Under Provocation

Aggressive behavior has been linked to biases in social information processing, including heightened attention to threat and hostile interpretations of ambiguous social cues. The extent to which attention and interpretational biases uniquely or jointly contribute to aggression under provocation remains unclear. The present study investigated the effects of attentional bias toward angry faces and hostile interpretation bias on aggression using both self-report and behavioral measures in a non-clinical sample. Participants (n = 67) completed an emotional attentional blink task and a hostile interpretation bias measure, alongside self-report indices of aggression and antisocial behavior, and an experimental measure of provoked aggression. Hostile interpretation bias was positively associated with self-reported aggression and antisocial tendencies, whereas attentional bias toward angry faces was selectively associated with behavioral aggression. Critically, these cognitive biases were examined as potentially independent, overlapping, or interactive contributors to aggression under provocation, and attentional and interpretation biases interacted to predict aggressive behavior under conditions of high provocation, such that individuals high in both biases displayed the greatest levels of aggression. No interaction effects were observed for self-reported outcomes. These findings support social information-processing models proposing that multiple cognitive biases jointly contribute to aggression and highlight the importance of considering situational provocation and outcome modality when examining cognitive risk factors for aggressive behavior and preventive cognitive interventions in at risk populations.