From words to action: Implicit attention to antisocial semantic cues predicts aggression and amygdala reactivity to angry faces in healthy young women

Abstract

Implicit measures of aggressiveness are able to circumvent response biases that plague self-reports, but it is unclear how they link to neural activation during aggressive interactions and to aggression-related endocrine function. Here, we tested whether an implicit attentional bias toward antisocial semantic information was associated with endogenous testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) levels, as well as with aggressive behavior and amygdala reactivity to angry faces in a separate competitive paradigm. On Day one, participants (39 healthy young women) completed an emotional word Stroop task in which they had to indicate the font color of antisocial, prosocial, or neutral words. On Day two, we measured subjects' brain activity during a competitive reaction time task in which the female opponent displayed angry or neutral facial expressions at the start of each trial and provoked participants with increasingly strong sound blasts. T and C were measured in saliva during a regular weekday as well as before and after scanning. We previously showed that aggression was associated with enhanced amygdala reactivity to angry faces in this sample. The present analyses revealed that subjects were slower to identify the font color of antisocial relative to neutral words, and that this attentional bias predicted higher aggression. T and C were uncorrelated with Stroop scores. Crucially, the relationship between implicit attention to antisocial words and aggression was mediated by amygdala reactivity to angry faces. Our data indicate that a tendency to dwell on implicit hostile cues reflects enhanced responsivity to overt anger displays.

Neurobiological correlates of violence perception in martial artists

“…Supporting this assumption, persons with more physical aggression and conduct problems appeared to be attracted by more violent combat sports (Vertonghen et al, ). In a competitive reaction time task (Buades‐Rotger & Krämer, ), a positive relationship between the attention to antisocial cues and aggressive behavior was found exclusively in subjects that showed enhanced amygdala activation when viewing angry faces. It should be noted that in this study the subjects were female and that words instead of pictures were used as cues.…”

Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

“…For instance, individuals displaying higher anger tendencies were slower to disengage from hostile words [75] and exhibited difficulties in processing nonhostile information in ambiguously hostile visual scenes [76]. Using neuroimaging data and an emotional word Stroop task, [77] found that attentional bias for antisocial words predicted aggression and that this relationship was fully mediated by amygdala reactivity to angry faces. The present study has also demonstrated a relationship between WM modulated attentional bias and hostile attribution bias.…”

Psychosomatic Symptoms and Neuroticism following COVID-19: The Role of Online Aggression toward a Stigmatized Group

“…Moreover, other researchers have posited that the propensity for aggressive behaviors may be linked to attentional biases involved in avoiding threat-relevant stimuli [33,34]. Concurring with this perspective, Buades-Rotger and Krämer [35] used an emotional word Stroop task to examine the relationship between threatening semantic information and aggressiveness, which indicated that a tendency to dwell on implicit risky cues can reflect enhanced aggression. Taken together, the above theorizing and evidence suggest that individuals in a threatening context may behave aggressively.…”