Objective: Data in gender differences in aggression among alcohol and drug dependent subjects are lacking, and no published data are available about gender differences among various subtypes of substance using populations. The goal of this cross-sectional study was to investigate gender differences with regard to types of trait aggression in substance dependent young populations (age: 20-35 years) compared to the general population.
Methods: Subjects were selected from two clinical samples with a diagnosis of alcohol and drug dependence as well as from a representative sample of the general population. Trait aggression was measured by the four individual subscales of the Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire (physical-PA, verbal aggression-VA, hostility-H and anger AN) whereas alcohol and drug use were characterized by the AUDIT and EuroADAD scales, respectively.
Results: Alcohol and drug dependent subjects showed higher severity on all four subscales of trait aggression compared to the general population. The male-female difference was the highest in the cannabis group. General Linear Model analysis for PA indicated a significant main effect of gender (higher PA for males, p=0.034) with no interaction between substance dependence and gender. For VA, no main effect or interaction for gender was found. Effect sizes for gender difference indicated that while males and females were similar in the control group in the severity in H and A, the level of H and AN was substantially higher in females than in males in the clinical group. These differences between the two genders reached statistical significance in the marijuana group, where female subjects showed a significantly higher severity in these two domains.
Conclusions: Compared to the normal sample chronic substance use is associated with higher scores on certain factors of trait aggression, including hostility and anger, in females than in males. Our data suggest that aggression in substance dependent females is more provocable by chronic use of alcohol and drugs than in males.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2011.04.005 | DOI Listing |
Personal Disord
January 2025
Department of Psychological Science, Kent State University.
Antagonism is a personality domain located in most major trait models and is central to multiple personality disorders. This construct has been linked to many societally harmful externalizing behaviors (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFR Soc Open Sci
January 2025
Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Whether individuals exhibit consistent behavioural variation is a central question in the field of animal behaviour. This question is particularly interesting in the case of social animals, as their behaviour may be strongly modulated by the collective. In this study, we ask whether honeybees exhibit individual differences in stinging behaviour.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University, Thomas Van Aquinostraat 4, 6525, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Psychopathic traits and antisocial behavior show a well-documented relationship with decreased empathic processing. It has been proposed that a reduced own experience of pain leads to perceiving others' pain as less severe, which potentially facilitates exploitative, aggressive behavior towards others. We evaluated the link between psychopathic traits, experimental pain sensitivity and empathy for pain in a community sample (n = 74).
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January 2025
Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, China.
Soc Sci Comput Rev
February 2025
Dalhousie University, Canada.
Many forms of online political incivility threaten democratic norms, contribute to polarization, and are often directed at women and racial minorities. Recent research shows that online political incivility may come from a minority of users that are just as hostile offline as they are online, meaning that individual differences in personality traits may be an important predictor of online political incivility. Drawing upon a large sample of adults living in Canada = 1725), we examined the association between personality traits and online political incivility using robust measures of psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and the general traits of the HEXACO.
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