Citation

Zajenkowska A, Rajchert J. J. Cogn. Psychol. (Hove) 2020; 32(2): 180-198.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/20445911.2020.1717498

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Hostility bias is based on the attribution of intentionality, personality traits such as trait anger and sensitivity to provocation (SP), as well as gender. Eye-tracking studies have shown that, prior to the interpretation of everyday social encounters, people might pay attention to hostile and non-hostile cues differently depending on trait anger; however, little is known about the encoding patterns of individuals sensitive to provocation. We conducted two studies, one of which was on interpretation and the other on encoding. Study 1 (N = 75) found that people low in SP gazed significantly longer at non-hostile cues than at hostile cues. Study 2 (N = 197, 84 men) revealed a significant interaction for judgment of intentionality in ambiguous scenes between gender and both SP and trait-anger; SP, trait anger and intentionality were negatively related in females, whereas in males they were positively related, although the relationships themselves (simple effects) were non-significant.

Language: en

Keywords

encoding; hostile attributions; interpretation; Sensitivity to provocation