Hoarding and aggression: Using the voodoo doll task to tease apart associations with direct and displaced aggression

Abstract

Objectives: Hoarding disorder is a debilitating and severe psychiatric condition. Research has implicated interpersonal factors as contributing to the development and maintenance of the disorder. Emerging evidence has suggested that aggression and anger-related concepts may contribute to these interpersonal difficulties, but aggression has only been measured thus far through self-report, which is limited by responding biases. Methods: In the present study, we examined the associations between self-reported hoarding symptoms and two forms of aggression using both questionnaire measures and a novel behavioural task of aggression. Participants included 466 participants from the community recruited through an online crowdsourcing platform, who completed an anger-induction task followed by a voodoo doll task as a measure of direct and displaced aggression. Results: Results revealed that hoarding symptoms were associated with greater aggression in both self-report and in the behavioural task. Self-report results also indicated that the relationship with displaced aggression may be modestly stronger than that of direct aggression, accounting for covariation. Conclusions: These findings suggest that aggression may be relevant in understanding interpersonal difficulties in hoarding and may have clinical and theoretical relevance for the disorder.