Clarifying associations between triarchic psychopathic traits, distress intolerance, and functions of aggression

Abstract

Psychopathic traits are consistently associated with proactive aggression (PA), although findings are mixed regarding relationships with reactive aggression (RA). These mixed results highlight the need to identify functional mechanisms that may modify the link between psychopathic traits and functions of aggression. Research suggests distress intolerance, a construct hypothesized to contribute to the development and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing disorders, may be important in understanding the psychopathic trait-aggression relationship. We sought to examine associations between triarchic psychopathic dimensions (boldness, disinhibition, and meanness), distress intolerance, and aggression; as well as explore the moderating influence of distress intolerance on the psychopathic trait-aggression relationship in a combined sample of undergraduate and community participants (N = 364) ranging in ages from 18 to 71. Triarchic constructs exhibited a differential correlational pattern with RA, PA, and self-reported distress intolerance (but not behaviorally indexed distress intolerance). Exploratory analyses revealed selfreported distress intolerance moderated the association between boldness and RA, as well as associations between the three psychopathy dimensions and PA, such that these correlations were strongest at higher levels of distress intolerance. Further, distress intolerance exhibited incremental validity in the prediction of boldness and disinhibition (but not meanness), beyond negative urgency. Results provide preliminary support for the role of distress intolerance in understanding the relationship between triarchic psychopathic traits and aggression.

Addressing the Complex Links between Psychopathy and Childhood Maltreatment, Emotion Regulation, and Aggression—A Network Analysis in Adults

“…In light of our study, aggression and disinhibition indeed assume reactive/impulsive forms to a perceived threat and an inability to regulate anger outbursts and intense negative affect [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][33][34][35][36]. The distinction between reactive and premeditated aggression is an important one because reactive violence in disinhibition is expected to occur in response to provocation (or stimuli perceived as hostile) and is marked by an unplanned response that the individual finds difficult to suppress given the experience of high negative affect [22,24,27,28,31,32,78].…”

“…Disinhibition-related traits are the closest correlates of childhood maltreatment [30] with deficits in emotional regulation, low effortful control, and high automatic reactivity to negative cues [24,29,31,32]. For instance, aggression in disinhibition assumes predominantly reactive/impulsive forms to a perceived threat [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][33][34][35][36]. Meanness traits also seem to be an outcome of processes of socialization that have failed, namely, a failure to develop secure attachments based on emotional caring [29,31,32,37].…”

“…Meanness traits also seem to be an outcome of processes of socialization that have failed, namely, a failure to develop secure attachments based on emotional caring [29,31,32,37]. Meanness encompasses features such as disdain for close attachments, shallow concern for the feelings of others, cruelty, exploitativeness, and premeditated/cold-blooded forms of aggression [22,24,25,27,28,[33][34][35][36]38]. Boldness, in turn, is uncorrelated with disinhibition but shares the low fear etiological pathway with meanness [31,32,39].…”