Summer Steely Proposes Thesis

Summer Steely, a doctoral student working in the lab, successfully proposed her master’s thesis yesterday. Summer’s thesis will focus on determining whether moral foundations theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2007) has utility in understanding social aggression in the context of psychopathic personality traits and moral disengagement. Moral foundations theory is a new area of study in the lab, and we are looking forward to learning more about how it may be relevant to many of the areas we have been studying.

Congratulations to Summer on her successful thesis proposal!

Summer Boggs Defends Thesis

Summer Boggs, a doctoral student working in the lab, successfully defended her master’s thesis yesterday. Summer’s thesis, "Social Anxiety and Relational Aggression in the Peer Relationships of College Women," examined the possible role of fear of negative evaluation in relational aggression in a sample of college women, utilizing Social Information Processing theory. Summer's sample proved to be unusually high on every measure of anxiety used, suggesting some limitations in the generalizability of her findings. Contrary to her predictions, fear of negative evaluation was not associated with higher levels of relational aggression. On the other hand, a broader measure of social anxiety did show a relationship with relational aggression, some of which was mediated by hostile attribution bias.

Congratulations to Summer on her successful thesis defense!

Savannah Merold Defends Dissertation

Savannah Merold, an advanced doctoral student who recently completed her predoctoral internship at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, MO, successfully defended her dissertation this week. Savannah's dissertation, "The role of mate seeking motives, status acquisition motives, and dark personality in predicting responses to an aggression-provoking situation," synthesized research from evolutionary and personality psychology. She used vignettes designed to activate social motives thought to be relevant to aggression (e.g., mate seeking, status acquisition), assessed dark personality traits, and examined participants' responses to an aggression-provoking scenario.

Although Savannah found evidence that the vignettes activated the intended motives for women, this was not the case for men. The smaller number of men in the study and some methodological limitations resulted in insufficient statistical power to detect these effects in men. Overall, hypotheses about social motives and dark personalty traits interacting with gender to predict aggressive responses were not supported. Future research in this area is likely to benefit from using much larger and more diverse samples that will permit more extensive examination of gender main effects and interactions.

Congratulations to Savannah on accomplishing this important milestone!

Alison Poor Defends Dissertation

Alison Poor, an advanced doctoral student about to begin her predoctoral internship at the Southeast Louisiana Veteran’s Healthcare System in New Orleans, successfully defended her dissertation yesterday. Ali’s dissertation, “Predictors of relational aggression in women across adulthood,” extended the literature on relational aggression among women by testing a moderated mediation model based on social information processing theory (Crick & Dodge, 1994) and comparing 3 developmental groups of women between 18 and 65.

Ali found that the relationship between relational victimization and relational aggression was partially mediated by anger rumination and hostile attribution bias and that normative beliefs about relational aggression moderated some of these relationships. Overall, her findings support the continued relevance of relational aggression among women through middle adulthood.

Congratulations to Ali on an impressive dissertation defense!

Erica Van Overloop Proposes Dissertation

Erica Van Overloop, a doctoral student working in the lab, successfully proposed her dissertation last week. Erica’s dissertation will explore the connection of peer victimization to mental health and well-being among college students. Trauma symptoms are a primary area of focus. She plans to examine experiences of peer victimization during college as well as those which occurred prior to college. She’ll also examine perceived social support as a moderator of these relationships. She will use some newer measures of peer victimization, so testing their factor structure will be an important part of her analyses.

Congratulations to Erica on a successful dissertation proposal!

Summer Boggs Proposes Thesis

Summer Boggs, a doctoral student working in the lab, successfully proposed her master’s thesis earlier this week. Summer’s thesis aims to advance the literature on relational aggression among college students by focusing on the fear of negative evaluation component of social anxiety, as suggested by Andrews and colleagues’ (2019) application of Social Information Processing theory. She plans to test hostile attribution bias as a mediator and to include empathy as a moderator of at least one predicted relationship. The literature is filled with conflicting findings about the relationship between social anxiety and relational aggression, so we hope that Summer’s project can help to clarify it.

Congratulations to Summer on her successful thesis proposal!

Alison Poor Proposes Dissertation

Alison Poor, an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her dissertation this week. Ali’s dissertation aims to learn more about relational aggression and victimization among adult women through the lens of social information processing theory (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Her planned use of an MTurk sample will allow her to test a theoretically derived model across three developmental periods.

Ali’s dissertation builds on her thesis work, which highlighted the role of anger rumination in relational aggression. She is adding a number of other variables that will allow her to test some proposed mediation and moderation relationships in one model, but we are most excited about her plans to conduct invariance testing across age groups. There has been relatively little research on relational aggression among adults, and we should learn more from Ali’s study.

Congratulations to Ali on her successful proposal!

Ali and Savannah Present Posters at Virtual MPA Convention

computer showing virtual conference
Two doctoral students working in the lab, Ali Poor and Savannah Merold, recently presented posters based on their mater’s theses at the Mississippi Psychological Association’s virtual conference. The references for their work, including links to the posters, are below.

Congratulations to Savannah and Ali for disseminating their findings!

Merold, S., Dahlen, E. R., Madson, M. B., & Nicholson, B. C. (2020, September 24-October 9). Psychopathic traits as a moderator of the relationship between social intelligence and relational aggression [Poster session]. 71st Annual Convention of the Mississippi Psychological Association, Bay St. Louis, MS, United States.

Poor, A., Dahlen, E. R., Leuty, M. E., & Nicholson, B. C. (2020, September 24-October 9). Relational aggression and trait anger: The mediating role of anger rumination [Poster session]. 71st Annual Convention of the Mississippi Psychological Association, Bay St. Louis, MS, United States.

Savannah Merold Proposes Dissertation

rocks in the water
Savannah Merold, an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her dissertation today. Savannah’s dissertation will examine the role of mate-seeking and status acquisition motives, along with dark personality traits (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism), in the use of direct and indirect aggression.

Building on her thesis work, she plans to use vignettes to activate mate-seeking and status motives and examine how the dark personalty traits predict participants’ responses. Gender will also be included, as it is expected that women and men may respond differently.

Congratulations to Savannah on the successful proposal!

Alison Poor Defends Thesis

sparkler
Alison Poor, a 2nd year doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, successfully defended her master's thesis this week. Her thesis examined trait anger, anger rumination, relational victimization, and vengeance as predictors of relational aggression among college students.

Ali examined two research questions separately due to the expected overlap between some of her variables and differences in the theoretical rationale for the models she tested. First, she found that anger rumination mediated the relationship between trait anger and relational aggression. Second, she found that vengeance did not mediate the relationship between relational victimization and relational aggression, although both relational victimization and vengeance predicted relational aggression.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ali's thesis defense was conducted online through Microsoft Teams. Fortunately, everything worked well and the online format was not an issue.

Congratulations to Ali on a successful thesis defense!

Taylor Bolton Defends Dissertation

Taylor Bolton's dissertation defense
Taylor Bolton, a 4th year doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, successfully defended her dissertation this week. Taylor’s study utilized structural equation modeling to test a multivariate model designed to improve our understanding of cyber aggression among college students and emerging adults not enrolled in college. She found that anger, sadistic personality traits, and moral disengagement predicted cyber aggression perpetration. Moreover, moral disengagement partially mediated the relationship between sadistic traits and cyber aggression perpetration.

After completing the revisions requested by her committee, Taylor plans to re-examine some of her analyses as we work on streamlining her study for publication. By eliminating some of the variables that contributed little and adding at least one covariate, we hope to end up with a more parsimonious model that will be helpful in understanding cyber aggression.

Congratulations to Taylor on the successful defense of her dissertation!

Taylor is in the process of applying for predoctoral internships next year. Defending her dissertation early will give her more time to focus on the internship experience.

Skylar Hicks Defends Dissertation

Skylar Hicks dissertation defense
Skylar Hicks, a 4th-year doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, successfully defended her dissertation this week. Her dissertation tested a moderated mediation model in which the relationships of adult attachment, romantic jealousy, mate value, and relationship investment to romantic relational aggression were examined.

Of note, Skylar found that both anxious and avoidant attachment were positively associated with relational aggression and that these associations were mediated by romantic jealousy. There was some evidence that mate value moderated some paths; however, it did not do so in the manner expected. On the other hand, there was no evidence that relationship investment moderated the mediated relationships.

Given that relational aggression in the context of intimate relationships may be a risk factor for intimate partner violence, we believe that research aimed at improving our understanding of this behavior is beneficial. Skylar’s findings suggest that attachment style is likely to be relevant to romantic relational aggression through its relationship with jealousy.

Congratulations to Skylar on her successful dissertation defense!

Skylar will soon begin her predoctoral internship at a Federal Bureau of Prisons site, the Federal Medical Center - Fort Worth in Fort Worth, TX. By completing her dissertation prior to her internship year, she will have more time to focus on the internship experience.

Alison Poor Proposes Thesis

Ali's thesis proposal
Alison Poor, a first-year student in the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her master’s thesis this week. Ali’s thesis will examine the role of trait anger, anger rumination, relational victimization, and vengeance in the context of relational aggression among college students.

Ali’s primary focus will be on trait anger, anger rumination, and relational aggression. We expect that anger rumination will mediate the relationship between trait anger and relational aggression, much as it has in previous studies with overt aggression. Although vengeance is being included on more of an exploratory basis to inform future studies of relational victimization, we expect that the relationship between relational victimization and relational aggression may be mediated by vengeful attitudes.

Congratulations to Ali on a successful thesis proposal!

Taylor Bolton Proposes Dissertation

man typing on computer in the dark
Taylor Bolton, a student in her third year of the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program, successfully proposed her dissertation this week. Taylor’s dissertation, “Assessing the effects of psychopathy, sadism, aggression, and boredom proneness on cyber aggression perpetration in emerging adults: Is moral disengagement to blame?” will test a theoretically derived model in which the effects of dark personality traits, aggressiveness, and boredom proneness on cyber aggression will be examined. Moral disengagement will be included as a predicted mediator of these relationships.

Taylor recently completed her master’s project on cyber aggression and is expanding this work into her dissertation. She is one of the first students in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab to focus on electronic aggression, and we are very interested to see what her dissertation research will reveal.

Congratulations to Taylor on the successful dissertation proposal!

Savannah Merold Defends Thesis

balloons floating in the air
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!

Skylar Hicks Proposes Dissertation

stack of books
Skylar Hicks, a doctoral student in her fourth year of the program, successfully proposed her dissertation this week. Skylar’s dissertation, Romantic relational aggression among college students: A moderated mediation study of attachment style, romantic jealousy, mate value, and relationship investment, will test a theoretical model aimed at improving our understanding of relational aggression in college students’ romantic relationships.

Skylar completed her master’s thesis in the Spring and has been gaining clinical experience as she prepares to apply for internship this year.

Congratulations to Skylar on completing this important milestone!

Niki Knight Defends Dissertation

writing hands
Niki Knight successfully defended her dissertation on Friday. Her study explored the relationship of two comparison-based traits (envy and contingent self-esteem) and two cognitive vulnerabilities (fear of negative evaluation and anger rumination) to indirect and displaced aggression. While there was reason to suspect that these variables would be related to aggression in general, little empirical evidence linked them directly to these particular forms of aggression.

Niki found that envy and anger rumination were positively related to indirect and displaced aggression. Fear of negative evaluation had a more limited role in that it was associated with some components of displaced and indirect aggression but not others. Surprisingly, contingent self-esteem did not appear to play a role in indirect or displaced aggression. Overall, her findings suggest that envy, fear of negative evaluation, and anger rumination likely have utility in understanding more subtle forms of aggression.

Congratulations to Niki on her successful defense!

Niki is currently completing her predoctoral internship at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System and has accepted a psychology postdoctoral residency next year at the Kansas City VA Medical Center.

Skylar Hicks Defends Thesis

Photo of book on a table
Skylar Hicks, a third-year student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully defended her master’s thesis this week. Skylar’s thesis, The role of emotion regulation in the relationship between trait anger and relational aggression, explored the role of general negative affect, trait anger, and difficulties in emotion regulation in peer relational aggression among college students.

She found that trait anger and difficulties in emotion regulation were positively related to peer relational aggression. That is, students with a higher propensity to experience angry feelings and difficulties regulating their emotions were more likely to report engaging in relationally aggressive behavior in their peer relationships. Contrary to what was expected, difficulties in emotion regulation did not moderate the relationship between trait anger and relational aggression. We will likely conduct additional analyses to determine why this might be the case and how best to incorporate emotion regulation in future studies.

Upcoming Paper on HEXACO, Dark Triad, and Relational Aggression

We just learned that a manuscript based on Niki Knight’s master’s thesis was accepted for publication in Personality and Individual Differences. Congratulations to Niki!

Here’s the abstract from the upcoming paper:

Relational aggression has been linked to many forms of psychological maladjustment. Identifying the personality traits associated with the perpetration of relational aggression offers promise in improving our ability to understand, prevent, and treat relationally aggressive behaviors. Much of the research to date has utilized the Five Factor Model; however, the HEXACO model of personality (Ashton et al., 2004) may offer some advantages in studying aggression. Moreover, the manipulative and often covert nature of relational aggression suggests that the Dark Triad personality traits are likely to be relevant. This study explored the utility of the HEXACO model and Dark Triad in predicting relational aggression in college students’ (N = 442) peer relationships. Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness predicted proactive and reactive relational aggression, and Emotionality also predicted reactive relational aggression. Pathological narcissism and psychopathy predicted proactive and reactive relational aggression while taking respondent gender and the full HEXACO model into account, with vulnerable narcissism and psychopathy serving as positive predictors and grandiose narcissism serving as a negative predictor. Findings support the utility of both the HEXACO and Dark Triad models in understanding peer relational aggression among emerging adults.

The citation is as follows:

Knight, N. M., Dahlen, E. R., Bullock-Yowell, E., & Madson, M. B. (in press). The HEXACO model of personality and Dark Triad in relational aggression. Personality and Individual Differences.

Savannah Merold Proposes Thesis

Savannah Merold's thesis proposal
Savannah Merold, a second-year student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her master’s thesis today. Savannah’s thesis will examine the role of social intelligence and psychopathic personality traits in relational aggression among emerging adults.

There is reason to believe that social and emotional intelligence are positive predictors of relational aggression, and some have suggested that certain levels of these forms of intelligence might be necessary for relational aggression to occur (or at least to be successful). At the same time, there is no reason to think that social or emotional intelligence would be sufficient to produce relational aggression. Thus, we plan to examine the degree to which psychopathic traits might inform our understanding of this relationship.

Congratulations to Savannah on a successful thesis proposal!

Amber Dedeaux at the Mississippi State Research Symposium

Amber Dedeaux at MS State symposium
Pictured here is Amber Dedeaux, a psychology major at the University of Southern Mississippi who has been working with us as an undergraduate research assistant. She has been working closely with Philip Stoner on a project through the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab dealing with jealousy and relationship satisfaction in romantic relational aggression among college women. The data used for this project were collected previously as part of a larger study on relational aggression. Amber and Philip focused on variables that had not yet been examined and found that relationship satisfaction moderated the relationship between cognitive jealousy and relational aggression in intimate partnerships.

Their work led to a poster presentation at Mississippi State University’s Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium (poster available here as a .pdf file). Both Amber and Philip were able to attend the symposium at Mississippi State and found it to be a positive experience. Congratulations to both on their success.

Taylor Nocera-Bolton Completes Master's Project

Taylor Nocera-Bolton
Taylor Nocera-Bolton, a master’s student who has been working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab and will be entering the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program in the Fall, has successfully completed her master’s project. Taylor examined a number of dark personality variables in the prediction of cyber aggression among college students. In addition to generating useful information that will guide the lab’s future study of cyber aggression, Taylor’s work led to a poster at the Southeastern Psychological Association in March and a manuscript we plan to submit for publication very soon.

What is a master’s project? When students with master’s degrees who did not complete a formal master’s thesis during their master’s program are admitted to the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program, they complete a master’s project before beginning work on their dissertations. A master’s project involves the completion of an independent research project that is similar to a master’s thesis but does not usually involve a thesis committee. These projects provide students with an opportunity to progress through the entire research process before taking on a dissertation. In addition to familiarizing the student with all aspects of research, they provide faculty with a clear sense of the student’s strengths and weaknesses, leading to the identification of appropriate training goals.

Taylor did a fantastic job with her master’s project, and we anticipate that she will have little difficulty transitioning into her dissertation work.

Caitlin Clark Defends Dissertation

Caitlin Clark successfully defended her dissertation on Monday. She completed a complex and time-consuming instrument development project, starting with running focus groups for item generation, moving through exploratory factor analysis with one sample, and culminating in a confirmatory factor analysis and validation study with another sample.

In spite of the increased interest received by relational aggression among emerging adults, the lack of psychometrically sound measures appropriate for this age range continues to be an important barrier. Caitlin’s dissertation, Validation of the Young Adult Relational Aggression Scale (YARAS), attempted to confirm the hypothesized factor structure of a new measure as well as assess its reliability and validity in a college student sample.

Although she was able to identify a suitable factor structure, doing so required her to correlate several items and meant that the predicted structure could not technically be confirmed (i.e., the confirmatory procedures became exploratory). Nevertheless, we learned a great deal about the construct and the new measure that should inform future work aimed at refining the measure.

Congratulations to Caitlin on completing this important milestone!

Caitlin is currently completing her predoctoral internship at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System in Florida and has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship next year at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston.

Dark Personality and Cyber Aggression Presentation Accepted for SEPA

Atlanta Night Skyline Wallpaper
We just had a presentation proposal accepted for the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, which will take place in Atlanta in March. Taylor Bolton a second-year master's student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, will present research based on her master's project. Taylor's research focuses on the role of dark personality traits in electronic aggression among college students.

One of the challenges in this area of research involves the lack of consensus in how electronic aggression (aka, cyber aggression, cyberbullying) should be defined and measured (Berne et al., 2013). Taylor is using what appears to be one of the better self-report measures available for emerging adults, the Cyberbullying Experiences Survey (Doane et al., 2013). We anticipate that her findings will provide useful information about the relationship between electronic aggression and offline relational aggression and between various dark personality traits and electronic aggression.

Congratulations, Taylor!

Daniel Deason Defends Dissertation

Image of man standing in the middle of a road
Daniel Deason successfully defended his dissertation today. He did a fantastic job developing and executing a complex project, and it was great to see him complete this important milestone.

Although the literature on relational aggression among emerging adults has advanced considerably over the last couple decades, surprisingly little is known about the role of culture in general and the nature of relational aggression among LGBT persons in particular. Daniel's dissertation, Hypermasculine, antifeminine: The role of masculine identity in relational aggression among gay men, examined relational aggression and victimization among gay men using Exclusively Masculine Identity Theory (EMIT; Killanski, 2003). Daniel's study utilized structural equation modeling to test models derived from EMIT in an effort to learn more about the possible role of adherence to masculine ideology and sex stereotypically.

The men who participated in Daniel's study differed from those described in some of the previously published research in terms of the masculine and feminine traits they considered desirable. Contrary to what we expected, participants with an exclusively masculine identity (i.e., those who had a more masculine ideal self and a more feminine undesired self) reported lower rates of relational aggression. Thus, while EMIT was useful in predicting relational aggression, the direction of the relationship was not what was anticipated. Daniel's results also suggest that certain domains of masculine ideology may be more useful in predicting relational aggression and victimization than the full EMIT model.

Daniel is currently completing his predoctoral internship at the University of Memphis Counseling Center in Memphis, TN.

Congratulations, Daniel!

Skylar Hicks Proposes Thesis

Skylar Hicks successfully proposed her master's thesis yesterday. Skylar's thesis will examine the relationship between trait anger and the perpetration of relational aggression among college students while taking general negative affect into account and testing the potential role of emotion regulation as a moderator of this relationship.

If emotion regulation moderates the relationship between anger and relational aggression, this may have implications for the treatment of relationally aggressive individuals. For example, such findings might indicate that anger management and other interventions aimed at improving emotion regulation could be beneficial for relationally aggressive young adults.

Skylar is a second-year doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of New Orleans and entered the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program in the Fall of 2015.

Congratulations to Skylar on the successful proposal!

Niki Knight Proposes Dissertation

Niki Knight successfully proposed her dissertation this week. Niki's dissertation will examine the potential role of dispositional envy, fear of negative evaluation, contingent self-esteem, and anger rumination in multiple forms of indirect aggression.

Indirect aggression describes forms of aggressive behavior that can be described as non-confrontational, manipulative, or concealed. It is similar to relational aggression in many ways; however, relational aggression can be direct or indirect, and indirect aggression can be broader in the behaviors it involves. The constructs Niki has selected are theoretically relevant to indirect aggression, and it is reasonable to test them as predictors. There has been little research directly linking them to indirect aggression even though all have been shown to predict direct aggression.

Niki is an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab who is in the process of applying for a predoctoral internship this year. Her previous work involved an examination of normal and dark personality traits in the context of relational aggression. With a successful dissertation proposal behind her, she will soon be able to begin data collection on her study.

Congratulations to Niki!

How Mental Health Professionals Can Help With Bullying Prevention

Bully Free Zone
StopBullying.gov has assembled a useful training module on bullying prevention aimed at mental health professionals, Understanding the Roles of Mental Health Professionals in Community-Wide Bullying Prevention Efforts (.pdf file). It reviews information on bullying and its effects, explains many of the roles mental health professionals have in solving the problem of bullying, offers suggestions for how mental health professionals can involve others in their communities, and shares several helpful resources.

It is hoped that making information like this more accessible will allow mental health professionals to approach the complex subject of bullying in a more informed manner and to make a difference in their communities.

The BPAQ-SF: A Brief Measure of Trait Aggression

Photo of a mask with an angry expression
The 29-item Aggression Questionnaire (AQ; Buss & Perry, 1992) is one of the most popular self-report measures of trait aggression. It yields four useful factors (i.e., Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility); however, the four-factor structure of the AQ has not always been confirmed, raising questions about the structure of the measure.

Bryant and Smith (2001) developed a 12-item short form of the AQ that retains the four-factor structure and appears to have some psychometric advantages over the original, including improved model fit. This version, referred to as the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire - Short Form (BPAQ-SF) in the literature, provides researchers interested in studying aggression with a more efficient alternative to the AQ.

In addition to Bryant and Smith's (2001) work testing the BPAQ-SF in multiple data sets, Kalmoe (2015) found support for the BPAQ-SF in nationally representative U.S. and college student samples. Slightly modified versions of the BPAQ-SF have also been used with mentally ill male offenders (Diamond, Wang, & Buffington-Vollum, 2005) and federal offenders (Diamond & Magaletta, 2006).

Thus, the BPAQ-SF provides researchers wanting to measure trait aggression with a relatively brief but psychometrically sound option.

Electronic Aggression

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has some information available on the topic of electronic aggression and its connection to youth violence. Since we recently mentioned some of the varying terminology used to describe these behaviors, it seemed important to note that the CDC suggests that electronic aggression is preferred term. They offer the following as their rationale: “Although many different terms-such as cyberbullying, Internet harassment, and Internet bullying-have been used to describe this type of violence, electronic aggression is the term that most accurately captures all types of violence that occur electronically.” This seems appropriate since electronic aggression is probably the broadest and most inclusive of the various terms.

They characterize electronic aggression as an "emerging public health problem" and note it has been linked to a number of problems among youth, including increased victimization, emotional distress, and conduct problems. Finally they provide downloadable resources for educators, parents and caregivers, and researchers.

At the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, we have just started collecting data for a new study on electronic aggression among college students. We are hoping to learn more about how to measure it effectively and how it relates to some of the dark personality variables we have been studying.

Cyber Aggression Study Planned

No cyberbullying
It goes by many different names (e.g., cyberbullying, cyber aggression, electronic aggression), but the concept will be familiar to anyone who has interacted with others online. Slonje and Smith (2008) referred to a form of aggressive behavior "in which the aggression occurs through modern technological devices, and specifically mobile phones or the internet." Dilmaç (2009) described "an individual or group willfully using information and communication involving electronic technologies to facilitate deliberate and repeated harassment or threat to another individual or group by sending or posting cruel text and/or graphics using technological means."

Consensus definitions of these constructs have been elusive (Zalaquett & Chatters, 2014), and the lack of consistently used and psychometrically sound measures has made it difficult to compare findings across studies. As a result, many basic questions about the nature of cyber aggression remain unanswered.

The lab is planning to begin collecting data soon for a study on cyber aggression. We hope to evaluate one of the more promising measures for assessing this behavior among college students and learn something about its correlates. Given the mounting evidence that these behaviors are associated with a number of adverse correlates for both aggressors and targets (e.g., Beran et al., 2012; Gini & Pozzoli, 2013), we believe the topic is worth investigating.

Niki Knight Defends Master's Thesis

Niki Knight successfully defended her master's thesis today, The HEXACO and Dark Triad in Relational Aggression. Niki examined the HEXACO model of personality and Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) as predictors of proactive and reactive peer relational aggression in a college student sample.

With regard to the HEXACO model, the factors of Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness were positively associated with proactive and reactive relational aggression in peer relationships. Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits were positively associated with reactive relational aggression; narcissistic and psychopathic but not Machiavellian traits were positively associated with proactive relational aggression. Taken together, Niki's results supported the utility of both the HEXACO model and the Dark Triad constructs in predicting peer relational aggression among college students.

Niki is a doctoral student in her third year of the program and will soon begin work on her dissertation.

Congratulations to Niki on a successful defense!

Caitlin Clark Proposes Dissertation

Caitlin Clark successfully proposed her dissertation today, an ambitious instrument development project aiming to validate a new self-report measure of relational aggression, the Young Adult Relational Aggression Scale (YARAS). Our hope is that the YARAS will ultimately prove to be a psychometrically sound means of assessing proactive and reactive relational aggression among emerging adults.

Many of the existing measures one finds in the adult relational aggression literature were adapted from measures developed with children and early adolescents. Others were developed for use in individual studies and have little evidence of reliability or validity. Still others are difficult to obtain because they were never published, have different versions without clear instructions for use, or do not distinguish between the proactive and reactive functions of relational aggression. Our hope is that the YARAS will be able to improve upon these and other limitations of existing instruments.

Caitlin is an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab who is in the process of applying for a predoctoral internship this year. With her successful dissertation proposal, she will soon be able to begin data collection.

Congratulations to Caitlin on completing this important milestone!

Daniel Deason Proposes Dissertation

Daniel Deason, an advanced doctoral student who will be applying for a predoctoral internship this year, successfully proposed his dissertation yesterday. He will soon be able to begin his data collection.

Despite evidence that relationally aggressive behaviors can cause problems for emerging adults, little is known about the nature of relational aggression among persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). Daniel's dissertation, Hypermasculine, antifeminine: The role of masculine identity in relational aggression among gay men, will examine relational aggression and victimization in the peer relationships of gay men using Exclusively Masculine Identity Theory (EMIT; Kilianski, 2003). Specifically, he aims to test a model derived from EMIT in which adherence to masculine ideology is examined as a potential moderator of the predicted relationship between an index of participants' sex stereotypically and their report of relational aggression and victimization.

Congratulations to Daniel on presenting a complex proposal so clearly!

Panel on Relational Aggression at MPA

Caitlin Clark, Daniel Deason, Niki Knight, and Ashley Morrison presented a panel discussion on relational aggression last week at the 66th Annual Convention of the Mississippi Psychological Association in Bay St. Louis. The panel, Relational aggression among young adults, defined relational aggression and provided examples of proactive and reactive functions of the behavior, reviewed several popular misconceptions about relational aggression and the relevant research literature, addressed the limitations of our knowledge about relational aggression among emerging adults, and examined treatment options for reducing relationally aggressive behaviors.

Congratulations to Caitlin, Daniel, Niki, and Ashley on a job well done!

Paper on Parenting and Relational Aggression Published

Our latest paper on relational aggression is now available in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma. The full citation is below. Congratulations to Caitlin!

Clark, C. M., Dahlen, E. R., & Nicholson, B. C. (2015). The role of parenting in relational aggression and prosocial behavior among emerging adults.
Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 24, 185-202. doi: 10.1080/10926771.2015.1002653

Developing a Measure of Relational Aggression

questionnaire
The Spring semester is about to begin, and we have several projects approaching the end of the data collection phase. One of the first for which we hope to wrap up data collection and begin data analysis involves the development of a new self-report measure of relational aggression in college students.

Our new measure aims to assess general/peer relational aggression and romantic relation aggression on separate scales and to permit each type of relational aggression to be divided into proactive and reactive functions. For example, a relational aggressive behavior like spreading a malicious rumor about a friend behind his or her back could be proactive (i.e., unprovoked, planned, done for gain) or reactive (i.e., done out of anger or in response to provocation, unplanned, impulsive). We also included items designed to measure electronic forms of relational aggression, a dimension important to college students but not found in existing measures.

Instrument development is usually a length and complex endeavor. We started by conducting a literature review in order to make sure we had a clear definition of relational aggression. We then developed an initial item set on the basis of focus groups with college students and a review of existing measures appropriate to either adolescents or adults. The focus groups were especially useful because they revealed some important limitations of existing measures and provided us with ideas for relevant content that had not occurred to us. After several rounds of revising items, we submitted our item set to several experts on relational aggression. We revised the item set again based on the input of the expert reviewers. Now we are close to completing the step of administering the new items along with a few existing measures of relational aggression and related constructs to a large sample of college students. This will allow us to examine the factor structure of the item set, reduce the number of items while maximizing reliability, and examine the concurrent and discriminant validity of the resulting measure.

While we hope to complete this phase of the project this semester, many additional steps will remain. In fact, we are planning for the next few steps to be carried out as Caitlin Clark's dissertation. We will be at this project for awhile, but we hope to end up with a measure that has some useful advantages over the option currently available.

Daniel Deason Defends Master's Thesis

Daniel Deason successfully defended his master's thesis today, Personality and Relational Aggression in College Students: The Role of Social Anxiety and Rejection Sensitivity. Daniel's study examined the utility of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality, as well as social anxiety and rejection sensitivity in predicting relational aggression in college students' peer and romantic relationships.

In examining the zero-order correlations between the FFM constructs and relational aggression, both peer and romantic relational aggression were inversely related to agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability (i.e., the inverse of neuroticism). Thus, more relationally aggressive students scored lower on agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

When peer relational aggression and romantic relational aggression were each regressed on the five FFM constructs, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability emerged as significant predictors. Students reporting more relational aggression tended to be more extraverted, less agreeable, and have lower emotional stability.

Based on the literature, the strongest case could be made for the role of agreeableness and emotional stability. So, sequential regressions designed to take student gender and race into account were conducted. Agreeableness and emotional stability predicted peer relational aggression; emotional stability predicted romantic relational aggression.

Finally, the incremental validity of social anxiety and rejection sensitivity was tested over and above participant gender, race, and the full FFM. Social anxiety but not rejection sensitivity demonstrated evidence of incremental validity here. Interestingly, extraversion joined agreeableness and emotional stability as predictors of both peer and romantic relational aggression, suggesting that this variable may be more relevant than was previously thought.

Additional analyses will be needed to better evaluate the potential role of participant gender and race, so we will be sure to share them here once they are completed.

Dark Personalities and Relational Aggression

The "Dark Triad" of personality refers to narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, three constructs with links to overt aggression and other socially undesirable behaviors. Despite the utility of these variables in understanding a variety of behaviors, relatively little is known about their potential role in relational aggression. Moreover, there may be other "dark personality" constructs not adequately represented in the Dark Triad that could be helpful in understanding relationally aggressive behaviors (e.g., sadism).

We recently started collecting data for a couple of studies examining the possible role of the Dark Triad constructs in relational aggression and how they fit into broader models of personality, such as the Five Factor Model and the
HEXACO model of personality.

These studies fit our goal of learning more about relational aggression among emerging adults. In addition, it seems that the study of dark personality constructs may be beneficial in some of our other research areas (e.g., anger and traffic psychology).

Paper on Parenting and Relational Aggression Accepted for Publication

Caitlin Clark, a doctoral student working in the lab, received some good news this summer. A paper based on her master's project was accepted for publication in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.

The paper, titled "The role of parenting in relational aggression and prosocial behavior among emerging adults," continues the lab's
research on relational aggression in college students. Results indicated that students' retrospective ratings of how they were parented were related to both relational aggression and prosocial behavior. Authoritative parenting, permissive parenting, and parental psychological control predicted relational aggression. Authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting predicted prosocial behavior, and participant race moderated the relationship between psychological control and prosocial behavior (i.e., parental psychological control was inversely related to prosocial behavior for Black students but not for White students).

Niki Knight Proposes Master's Thesis

Niki Knight, a doctoral student in her first year of the Counseling Psychology Program, successfully proposed her master's thesis today, The HEXACO Model of Personality and Dark Triad in Relational Aggression. She can begin data collection after obtaining IRB approval.

Niki's thesis will examine the relationships between the constructs represented by the HEXACO personality model and relational aggression in college students, focusing on the role of Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness. Additionally, she will assess the predictive utility of the Dark Triad constructs (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) in predicting proactive and reactive relational aggression.

Relational Aggression in College Students

aggression
Relational aggression is a form of aggressive behavior in which the aggressor harms others by deliberately manipulating, damaging, or threatening to damage their relationships, feelings of acceptance or inclusion, and/or social status (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Werner & Crick, 1999). The destructive nature of relational aggression among children and early adolescents has been established for some time, but relatively little was known about relational aggression in older adolescents and emerging adults until recently.

Research conducted at the
Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab has focused on contributing to the growing literature on relational aggression in college students. Below is a summary of three recent studies conducted at the lab.

1.
Czar, Dahlen, Bullock, and Nicholson (2011) explored the potential role of psychopathic personality traits in relational aggression among college students. Both primary and secondary psychopathic traits predicted relational aggression, and these relationships did not vary by gender. This suggests that psychopathic traits (e.g., a lack of empathy or remorse, dishonesty, impulsivity, antisocial behavior), known to predict overt aggression, may also be relevant to understanding relational aggression.

2.
Prather, Dahlen, Nicholson, and Bullock-Yowell (2012) found that male and female college students reported engaging in similar levels of relational aggression in their dating relationships. Students with traditional (as opposed to egalitarian) sex role attitudes were more likely to engage in dating relational aggression, regardless of gender. In addition, the acceptance of couple violence predicted dating relational aggression over and above trait anger and sex role attitudes. Taken together, the results suggest that college students who experience more frequent and intense anger than their peers, hold traditional sex role attitudes, and are more accepting of intimate partner violence are more likely to commit acts of relational aggression in their dating relationships.

3.
Dahlen, Czar, Prather, and Dyess (2013) found that college students who described themselves as more relationally aggression reported higher levels of anxiety, depression, anger, loneliness, academic burnout, and the misuse of alcohol. The correlates of relational victimization were similar, suggesting that both relational aggression and victimization can be disruptive to college students' social and emotional functioning. Dahlen and colleagues (2013) also found that anxiety, trait anger, and personal problems related to alcohol use predicted relational aggression in peer relationships while taking students' gender, race, and experiences with relational victimization into account.

Daniel Deason Proposes Thesis on Personality and Relational Aggression

Daniel Deason, a doctoral student in his second year, successfully proposed his master's thesis today. He did a great job presenting his study and obtained approval from his committee to move forward.

Daniel's thesis, Personality and Relational Aggression in College Students: The Role of Social Anxiety and Rejection Sensitivity, will examine the utility of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality, social anxiety, and rejection sensitivity in predicting relational aggression between peers and romantic partners. We expect that some of the Big Five personality factors will predict relational aggression but that social anxiety and rejection sensitivity will explain additional variance in relational aggression beyond the contribution of the FFM.

Presentation on Relational Aggression at Texas Psychological Association

Lab alumna, Michelle (Augustin) Christopher will be presenting work based on her dissertation at the Texas Psychological Association's 2012 Annual Convention in Austin, TX. She will have a poster titled "Correlates of Relational Aggression in College Students" in a poster session on November 1 and will then present a paper titled "Validation of the Young Adult Social Behavior Scale" as part of a symposium on November 3.

Congratulations to Michelle on having the poster and presentation accepted!

Kate Defends Dissertation on Regional Differences in Relational Aggression

Kate Czar successfully defended her dissertation yesterday. Her study, Regional Differences in Relational Aggression: The Role of Culture, compared college students from two regions of the U.S. (one northern and one southern) on relational aggression, gender role attitudes, and normative beliefs about aggression. Southern participants were more likely to report engaging in relationally aggressive behaviors and endorsed more traditional gender roles than did northern participants. Apart from the regional differences, gender role attitudes were associated with relational aggression in that participants holding more traditional gender role attitudes were more likely to report behaving in relationally aggressive ways. Independent of physical aggressiveness, gender role attitudes predicted relational aggression among women.

Congratulations to Kate on an excellent defense!

What is Relational Aggression?

relational aggression
Relational aggression refers to a set of behaviors through which the aggressor harms others by adversely affecting their social relationships, reputation, and/or feelings of inclusion or belonging (Crick et al., 1999; Linder, Crick, & Collins, 2002). Common examples include spreading malicious rumors and gossip, social exclusion, and public embarrassment.

Psychologists have been studying relational aggression since the mid-1990s, and it has long been recognized as a problem by many parents of school-aged children. However, it took the 2004 film Mean Girls to bring relational aggression to the attention of the larger public. Since then, the costs of relational aggression among children and early adolescents have become increasingly clear. Victims are more likely to suffer from a variety of psychological problems, including anxiety and depression; both victims and aggressors are more likely to misuse substances and engage in a number of delinquent behaviors (Archer & Coyne, 2005; Sullivan, Farrell, & Kliewer, 2006).

Surprisingly little is known about relational aggression among older adolescents and adults, but this is slowly starting to change. Research is underway to investigate the nature of relationally aggressive behaviors among college students. One of the interesting findings to emerge so far is that the gender difference observed among children and younger adolescents (i.e., relational aggression is more common among girls) does not appear to be present.

Lab's Work Noticed by the Wall Street Journal

Our work at the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab was noted by The Wall Street Journal in an article published today about “sidewalk rage.” I was one of several anger researchers interviewed for the story, and the author did an impressive job of capturing the current state of the research on this form of aggression.

“Sidewalk rage” is a relatively new term being used to describe aggressive behavior between pedestrians, but it is already starting to generate interest in major cities. According to the article, a measure of pedestrian aggressiveness has been developed, and this should facilitate additional research. It will be interesting to see how pedestrian aggressiveness compares to aggressive driving. I expect the processes underlying both conditions to be similar; however, I would not be surprised to find some important differences as well. For example, I suspect that impatience may play a bigger role in aggression among pedestrians than it does among drivers.