Physical Aggression Is Associated With More Effective Postdecisional Processing of Social Threat

Abstract

Physically aggressive individuals are more likely to decide that others are threatening. Yet no research has examined how physically aggressive individuals’ social decisions unfold in real time. Seventy-five incarcerated men completed a task in which they identified the emotions in faces displaying anger (i.e., threat) and happiness (i.e., nonthreat) at low, moderate, or high ambiguity. Participants then rated their confidence in their decisions either immediately or after a delay, and changes in confidence provided an index of postdecisional processing. Physical aggression was associated with stronger differentiation of threatening and nonthreatening faces under moderate ambiguity. Moreover, physical aggression was associated with steeper decreases in confidence over time following decisions that threatening faces were nonthreatening, indicating more extensive postdecisional processing. This pattern of postdecisional processing mediated the association between physical aggression and angry rumination. Findings suggest a role for postdecisional processing in the maintenance of threat-based social decisions in physical aggression.