Does Aggressive Trait Induce Implicit Aggression among College Students? Priming Effect of Violent Stimuli and Aggressive Words

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the priming effect of exposure to violent pictures on implicit aggression in a sample of 94 Chinese college students, and to verify the validity of General Aggression Model (GAM) and Cognitive New-association Model (CNM). Violent and nonviolent pictures, as well as aggressive and nonaggressive words, were used as primes to explore the relationship between violent stimuli and implicit aggression of college students by employing modified Go-Nogo task. The results suggested that the priming effect of exposure to violent pictures on participants was obvious, and that brief exposure to violent pictures increased implicit aggression. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) found that interaction between stimuli type (violent vs. nonviolent) and target word (aggressive vs. nonaggressive) was significant, implying that violent stimuli primed implicit aggression among college students. Further simple effect analysis showed that implicit aggression was significantly primed by violent stimuli for participants with high aggressiveness (HA) and moderate aggressiveness (MA), but not for participants with low aggressiveness (LA). This result should be cautiously explained that only implicit aggression of college students with HA and MA was significantly primed by violent stimuli.

Aggressive Behavior of Adolescents in terms of Authoritarian Parenting Perceptions

“…[17] explained that aggressive behavior is explained through Freud's theory which views aggressive behavior as intrinsic and instinct inherent in humans. The appearance of aggressive behavior can be caused by images of violent behavior that are seen repeatedly [18]. In addition, several factors can lead to aggressive behavior.…”