EFFECTS OF AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY ON SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS AND SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS

Individual differences in aggressive reaction tendencies appear early in life and are stable across the life span. People who chronically in terpret ambiguously aggressive behaviors as intentionally hostile are more likely to aggress against a provocateur than people without this hostile bias. Two studies used a Structural Equation Modeling approach to examine the effects of aggressive personality on hostile expectati ons and hostile perceptions in personally irrelevant social interactio ns. Study 1 demonstrated that aggressive personality was positively re lated to hostile expectations in the imagined outcomes of ambiguously aggressive story stems. Study 2 demonstrated that aggressive personali ty was positively related to hostile perceptions of observed dyadic in teractions. This finding was not limited to the interpretation of ambi guous interactions, as has been found in the past. Results are discuss ed in terms of their applicability to understanding biased interpretat ions of everyday social interactions. (C) 1997 Academic Press.