Sex differences in direct aggression: What are the psychological mediators?
By Andrea Campbell. 2006
254 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Provocation enhances aggression but diminishes the magnitude of the sex difference. This suggests that the greater involvement of men in aggression might derive from their higher levels of anger or from their lower levels of fear and fear-related inhibition. A review of the relevant literature strongly suggests that there are no sex differences in anger but pronounced differences in fear, especially of physical danger. Three forms of behavioral inhibition (reactive, effortful and self control), which build developmentally on an infrastructure of fear, show negative associations with aggression and sex differences generally favouring females. Cognitive inhibition shows weaker associations with aggression (when IQ is controlled) and inconsistent sex differences. Empathy and guilt, both of which are correlated with inhibition, aggression, and sex are also considered as possible mediators. The relative utility of evolutionary and social role theories in accounting for this pattern of findings is considered.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8a7c8114a653755715caa022d0b720a96573d4c3
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In Clinical Psychology
In Social Psychology
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- Eran Halperin
Citations in the corpus
- Meta-analysis of the relationship between digit-ratio 2D:4D and aggression (2011, background): “Aggression shows a reliable sex difference with men being, on average, more aggressive than women (Campbell, 2006; Daly & Wilson, 1988).”
- The Social Costs and Benefits of Anger as a Function of Gender and Relationship Context (2011, background): “Because anger is considered to imply the readiness to attack another person (see also Bettencourt and Miller 1996; Campbell 1993, 2006; Eagly and Steffen 1986; Fehr et al. 1999; Richardson and Green 1999), negative social appraisals would result in an indirect expression or a suppression of their…”