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!

Tags: relational aggression, anger rumination, gender, victimization

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!

Tags: relational aggression, victimization, anger rumination

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.

Tags: relational aggression, social intelligence, psychopathy, anger rumination

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!

Tags: anger rumination, relational aggression, victimization, trait anger

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!

Tags: relational aggression, anger rumination, trait anger

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.

Tags: anger rumination, envy, indirect aggression, self-esteem

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!

Tags: indirect aggression, envy, self-esteem, anger rumination