Savannah Merold, a student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully defended her master’s thesis last week. Savannah’s thesis, Psychopathic traits as a moderator of the relationship between social intelligence and relational aggression, examined the relationship of social intelligence, psychopathic personality traits, and other variables to relational aggression in a college student sample.

Social intelligence and psychopathic traits were related to the perpetration of relational aggression, with social intelligence having a negative relationship and psychopathic traits having a positive relationship. Psychopathic traits moderated the relationship between social intelligence and relational aggression so that it became stronger as psychopathic traits increased. Some of Savannah’s findings differed from what was predicted, but since she included some additional variables beyond what we used for her thesis, we hope to run some additional analyses to learn more about the possible role of social intelligence and psychopathic traits in relational aggression.

Congratulations to Savannah on the successful thesis defense!

Tags: relational aggression, psychopathy, social intelligence