Abstract
Aggression is a type of negative social behavior. Agreeableness and anger-related cognition are thought to be important factors that affect aggression. The longitudinal relations among agreeableness, anger-related cognition and aggression, and the affective cognitive path underlying the relationship between agreeableness and aggression are not clear, however. In this study, 942 college students were investigated twice at an interval of six months, using the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, Anger Rumination Scale, and agreeableness subscale of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. The results indicate that: agreeableness negatively predicts anger rumination and aggression after six months; anger rumination positively predicts aggression over time; and anger rumination mediates the longitudinal association between agreeableness and aggression. These results suggest that the prosocial personality may withstand aggression through resisting anger-related cognition. This study deepens our understanding of the relationships between personality and aggression, allowing a development of the General Aggression Model, in terms of recognizing the cognitive pathway for personality to influence aggression, and provides theoretical guidance on reducing the generation of aggression in daily life.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the Project of the Human Social Science Research Program of the Ministry of Education (19YJA190008).
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Fangying Quan: Methodology; Formal analysis; Writing – review & editing.
Rujiao Yang: Formal analysis; Writing – original draft; Writing.
Ling-Xiang Xia:Conceptualization; Data curation; Funding acquisition; Investigation;Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Writing – review & editing.
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Quan, F., Yang, R. & Xia, LX. The longitudinal relationships among agreeableness, anger rumination, and aggression. Curr Psychol 40, 9–20 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01030-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01030-6