Social Cognitive Processing in Violent Male Offenders

Abstract

Social cognitive processing deficits are widely believed to play a central causal role in aggressive behaviour. In this study 76 adult male prisoners (38 violent, 38 non-violent) were presented with a video scenario depicting an interpersonal provocation and asked to rate their experience of anger and the likelihood of them acting aggressively in response to the provocation. It was hypothesized that violent offenders would predict that they would be more likely to act aggressively, feel higher levels of anger, and report hostile attributions following an interpersonal provocation than non-violent offenders, but that hostile attributions would be associated with aggression only in those who s..