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The Utility of Forms and Functions of Aggression in Emerging Adulthood: Association with Personality Disorder Symptomatology

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Abstract

A sample of 679 (341 women) emerging adults (M = 18.90 years; SD = 1.11; range = 18.00–22.92) participated in a study on the utility of forms (i.e., physical and relational) and functions (i.e., proactive and reactive) of aggression. We examined the link between these four subtypes of aggression and personality pathology (i.e., psychopathic features, borderline personality disorder features, and antisocial personality disorder features). The study supports the psychometric properties (i.e., test–retest reliability, internal consistency, discriminant validity) of a recently introduced measure of forms and functions of aggression during emerging adulthood. Aggression subtypes were uniquely associated with indices of personality pathology. For example, proactive (i.e., planned, instrumental or goal-oriented) and reactive (i.e., impulsive, hostile or retaliatory) functions of relational aggression were uniquely associated with borderline personality disorder features even after controlling for functions of physical aggression and gender. The results highlight the differential associations between forms and functions of aggression and indices of personality pathology in typically developing emerging adults.

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Notes

  1. In selecting participants for the larger ERP study and the test–retest assessment, in order to increase variability in the sample, scheduling preference was given to participants who were above the mean on physical aggression, relational aggression or both. There were no statistically significant differences between the sub-sample that completed the second time point and those that did not for age [t(697) = 1.47, p = .143], academic year [t(699) = 1.14, p = .253] or GPA [t(518) = −1.50, p = .134]. There was also no difference for reactive relational aggression between those that participated at time 2 (M = 15.21; SD = 5.53) and those that did not (M = 14.64; SD = 5.33), t(698) = .90, p = .37. There were differences for proactive relational aggression, t(698) = 3.12, p = .002, such that those that completed time 2 (M = 10.35; SD = 4.57) were higher than those that did not (M = 8.94; SD = 3.68). The test–retest sub-sample (M = 5.50; SD = 2.99) was higher in proactive physical aggression than those that did not return to the laboratory (M = 4.90; SD = 2.50), t(698) = 1.98, p = .048. Finally, the test–retest sub-sample (M = 6.85; SD = 3.69) was higher in reactive physical aggression than those that did not return to the laboratory (M = 5.64; SD = 3.38), t(700) = 2.98, p = .003.

  2. Due to missing data on the fearless dominance scale of the PPI for one participant the lower bound for the range was 26 and not 28.

  3. Multicollinearity was not detected as the conditioning index was not greater than 30 for any of the dimensions and the variance proportions were not greater than .50 for more than two different variables (Tabachnick and Fidell 2007).

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Acknowledgments

We thank all the members of the UB Social Development, Social Cognition and Neuroscience Project. In particular, we thank Stephanie A. Godleski, Emily E. Ries and Nicolas Schlienz for their assistance with the coordination of this project. We wish to acknowledge the participants for volunteering for this study. Portions of this study were presented at: The 47th annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Savannah, GA; the 2007 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA; the 46th annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Vancouver, British Columbia; and the 2008 meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Chicago, IL.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, 214 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY, 14260-4110, USA

    Jamie M. Ostrov

  2. Research Institute on Addictions, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Rebecca J. Houston

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Ostrov, J.M., Houston, R.J. The Utility of Forms and Functions of Aggression in Emerging Adulthood: Association with Personality Disorder Symptomatology. J Youth Adolescence 37, 1147–1158 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-008-9289-4

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