The biological basis of parenting has received recent attention given the profound effects of parenting on both child and parent health outcomes. This study examined the moderating role of child temperamental effortful control on the association between observed parental hostility and parents' cortisol awakening response (CAR), a critical index of stress system functioning. Participants include...

People can experience great distress when a group to which they belong (in-group) is perceived to have committed an immoral act. We hypothesised that people would direct hostility toward a transgressing in-group whose actions threaten their self-image and evoke collective shame. Consistent with this theorising, three studies found that reminders of in-group transgression provoked several expres...

The aim of this study was to analyse the relationships between polymorphisms in four candidate genes (AR, DAT1, DRD2, and COMT) and aggression in men from a traditional society of East African pastoralists, the Datoga. Buss and Perry's Aggression Questionnaire was used to measure aggression. The number of CAG repeats in the AR gene was negatively correlated with physical aggression, anger, and ...

Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans were grouped by level of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology and compared on self-report measures of trait anger, hostility, and aggression. Veterans who screened positive for PTSD reported significantly greater anger and hostility than those in the subthreshold-PTSD and non-PTSD groups. Veterans in the subthreshold-PTSD group reported significa...

The authors investigated whether different types of aggression relate to the A779C tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH) polymorphism and to serotonergic activity in volunteers. A factor analysis of the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory yielded 2 factors representing Neurotic Hostility (NH) and Aggressive Hostility (AH). The authors used a neuroendocrine challenge with Citalopram in 48 volunteers and incr...

Recent research reveals that playing prosocial video games increases prosocial cognitions and helpful behaviors [Gentile el al., 2009; Greitemeyer and Osswald, 2009; 2010; 2011]. These results are consistent with social-cognitive models of social behavior [e.g., the "General Learning Model," Buckley and Anderson, 2006]. The social-cognitive learning models suggest that in addition to influencin...

This study tested the hypothesis that women with higher prolactin feel more hostility, anger and aggression. A total of 66 women with moderate fertility problems were grouped into the 50% who had the highest and the 50% who had the lowest levels of prolactin. Levels of hostility, aggression and anger were compared. Women with higher prolactin levels did not report significantly increased hostil...