The Anatomy of Anger: An Integrative Cognitive Model of Trait Anger and Reactive Aggression

Benjamin M. Wilkowski1 and Michael D. Robinson2

1 2

University of Wyoming

North Dakota State University

ABSTRACT This paper presents an integrative cognitive model, according to which individual differences in 3 cognitive processes jointly contribute to a persons level of trait anger and reactive aggression. An automatic tendency to attribute hostile traits to others is the rst of these cognitive processes, and this process is proposed to be responsible for the more frequent elicitation of anger, particularly when hostile intent is ambiguous. Rumination on hostile thoughts is the second cognitive process proposed, which is likely to be responsible for prolonging and intensifying angry emotional states. The authors nally propose that low trait anger individuals use effortful control resources to self-regulate the inuence of their hostile thoughts, whereas those high in trait anger do not. A particular emphasis of this review is implicit cognitive sources of evidence for the proposed mechanisms. The authors conclude with a discussion of important future directions, including how the proposed model can be further veried, broadened to take into account motivational factors, and applied to help understand anger-related social problems.

In June of 2007, a professor and chair of the molecular biology department verbally assaulted and threatened to kill a University of New Hampshire administrator. Apparently, the professor was angry about a recent parking ticket and blamed the administration for this occurrence (Gawrylewski, 2007). Although the professor was eventually found not guilty on charges of disorderly conduct and stalking, he was nonetheless stripped of his position as department chair
The authors acknowledge support from the NSFs Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF/EPSCoR). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ben Wilkowski, University of Wyoming, Department of Psychology, Department 3415, 1000 East University Avenue, Laramie, WY 82071. E-mail: BWilkows@uwyo.edu.

Journal of Personality 78:1, February 2010 r 2010, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation r 2010, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00607.x

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and professor and ultimately banned from the campus (Mytelka, 2007). This simple anecdote helps to illustrate how even in the hallowed halls of academia, anger can often be a destructive force. Philosophers and poets have long suggested that chronically high levels of anger are ultimately counterproductive, at least in relation to ones prospects for social standing in a civilized society (Freud, 1964; Tavris, 1984). For example, Horace (20 B.C./2001) likened anger to a brief lunacy and Benjamin Franklin (1734) stated, Whatevers begun in anger ends in shame. Empirical research supports the point that chronically high levels of anger can be quite problematic. Individuals prone to anger are more aggressive in their behavior (Bettencourt, Talley, Benjamin, & Valentine, 2006), and this is true in relation to outcomes such as murder (Berkowitz, 1993), child abuse (Nomellini & Katz, 1983), and domestic violence (Barbour, Eckhardt, Davison, & Kassinove, 1998). Although most experiences of anger are unlikely to produce destructive behaviors of this magnitude, high levels of dispositional anger have also been linked to difculties in romantic relationships (Baron et al., 2007) and to cardiovascular disease, the major cause of death in modern societies (T. W. Smith, Glazer, Ruiz, & Gallo, 2004; J. E. Williams et al., 2000). Thus, tendencies toward anger can apparently break a persons heart in both a gurative and literal sense. Given the destructive impact that anger often has, it is natural to ask why it is that some people are more prone to anger than others. Although there are certainly multiple root causes of individual differences in angerincluding genetic, hormonal, and environmental factorsscholars dating back to Pythagoras and Confucius have suggested that thought processes are likely to be involved as well and may in fact mediate biological and environmental inuences in this regard (Dabbs & Dabbs, 2000; Dodge & Pettit, 2003; van Honk & Schutter, 2007). Recent empirical work corroborates this point. Cognitively oriented psychotherapies have been shown to be successful in reducing an individuals tendency toward anger and reactive aggression (A. T. Beck, 1999; R. Beck & Fernandez, 1998; Deffenbacher, Dahlen, Lynch, Morris, & Gowensmith, 2000). Furthermore, social cognitive approaches to such individual differences have been supported in multiple subdisciplines of psychology (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 1993; Blair, Mitchell, & Blair, 2005; Crick & Dodge, 1994).

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The goal of the current review is to present an integrative cognitive model of individual differences in anger and reactive aggression. In doing so, we were inuenced by relevant prior models (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 1993; Crick & Dodge, 1994) as well as by more recent attempts to instantiate these models in more specic cognitive terms (see Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008a). After reviewing some relevant distinctions, we introduce the integrative cognitive framework that guides our subsequent review of the literature. After reviewing the existing body of cognitive research on trait anger and reactive aggression, we conclude with a discussion of the wider implications of this model, including its unique predictions, its relation to motivational factors, and its implications for understanding and treating anger-related social problems.

Denitions and Distinctions

One useful distinction that has been made in the literature is between state and trait anger. Spielberger (1988, p. 1) dened state anger as an emotional state marked by subjective feelings that vary in intensity from mild annoyance or irritation to intense fury and rage. Trait anger, by contrast, relates to more chronic individual differences in the frequency, intensity, and duration of state anger episodes (Spielberger, 1988). Specically, high trait anger individuals are more likely to respond to hostile situational input (e.g., insult, provocation) with increased state anger. This is true in relation to both self-reported state anger (Deffenbacher, 1992) and physiological measures (T. W. Smith et al., 2004). It is also true that individuals high in trait anger are more likely to behave in an aggressive manner following provocation. In a recent meta-analytic review, Bettencourt et al. (2006) found that trait anger predicted laboratory measures of aggressive behavior in hostile situational contexts, but not in nonhostile contexts. Thus, there is a strong conceptual overlap between trait anger and the construct that has been labeled reactive aggression, referring to individual differences in the tendency to react aggressively when provoked (Dodge & Coie, 1987; Hubbard et al., 2002; Hubbard, McAuliffe, Morrow, & Romano, this issue). Accordingly, the current review will focus on literatures related to both trait anger and reactive aggression.

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Trait anger also ts within broader dimensional approaches to personality (Watson & Clark, 1992a, 1992b). Relevant to this broader conception are the constructs of trait aggression and agreeableness. Trait aggression includes not only tendencies toward reactive aggression, the focus of our review, but also tendencies toward what is termed proactive aggression, dened in terms of aggression in the service of an instrumental goal (Dodge & Coie, 1987). Agreeableness is an even broader personality construct dened both in terms of low anger and aggression as well as increased prosocial thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997; Watson & Clark, 1992b). Although trait aggression and agreeableness are broader constructs than trait anger, we review relevant data when it is apparent that they inform the anger-reactivity processes of interest here. This is a necessary feature of our review because different individual difference measures have been assessed across studies, but our goal is to bring such data together within a common integrative model.

AN INTEGRATIVE COGNITIVE MODEL OF TRAIT ANGER AND REACTIVE AGGRESSION

Our Integrative Cognitive Model of trait anger (henceforth termed the ICM: Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008a) is presented in Figure 1. At the broadest level, a persons habitual cognitive processing tendencies are seen as intervening between hostile situational input and resultant tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression. The model further points to cognitive processes that both exacerbate (solid lines) and mitigate (dashed lines) reactivity to hostile situational input. Our model also considers the contribution of both automatic and controlled processes. In making this distinction, we follow standard conventions in the literature, which dene processes as automatic when they proceed spontaneously (i.e., without instruction), efciently (i.e., without consuming cognitive resources), and unconsciously. However, it should also be noted that such criteria of automaticity have been shown to be somewhat independent (Bargh, 1994; Zbrodoff & Logan, 1986). For this reason, we take efforts to be precise concerning the relevant criteria of automaticity we are referring to. Regardless, though, the general distinction between automatic and controlled processes is central to both cognitive

Integrative Cognitive Model

Ruminative Attention
Am

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pli

SelfDistraction

Hostile Situation

Automatic Interpretation

Ca p

fic a

tio n

Hostile Interpretation
Re ui cr en tm ra t isa l Re -a pp

Elicitation Anger

Effortful Control

Suppression

Aggression, Anger Expression

Figure 1

The Integrative Cognitive Model of trait anger and reactive aggression. Note: Solid lines depict pathways by which anger and reactive aggression are increased, whereas dotted lines depict pathways by which anger and reactive aggression are decreased.

(Zbrodoff & Logan, 1986) and social cognition (Bargh, 1994) literatures and thus serves as the most general heuristic framework for our integrative efforts. According to the ICM, the rst process relevant to understanding trait anger involves the interpretation of situational input. The model specically suggests that certain individuals are automatically biased toward hostile interpretations of situational input, and this, in turn, leads to the more frequent elicitation of anger among such individuals. This suggestion is, of course, consistent with attributionand appraisal-based models of emotion elicitation (Smith & Lazarus, 1990; Weiner, 1986) and parallel theorizing in the social cognition literature on anger and aggression (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Crick & Dodge, 1994). Furthermore, the proposal that this stage of interpretation is automatic is consistent with social cognitive work on the automaticity of social inference (Skowronski, Carlston, Mae, & Crawford, 1998; Uleman, Blader, & Todorov, 2005), as will be further discussed below. The ICM next suggests that ruminative aspects of attention reinforce interpretation-related biases, in turn amplifying anger and prolonging the likelihood of reactive aggression. The suggestion that ruminative processes increase anger and reactive aggression is consistent with a wider literature on rumination and emotional reactivity (Bushman, 2002; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991; Rusting & Nolen-

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Hoeksema, 1998). The ICM further suggests that anger-related rumination can be understood in terms of selective attention processes, a case that will be further developed below. Finally, the ICM posits that effortful control processes are effective in counteracting incipient tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression. The idea that effortful control is important to emotional regulation is consistent with emerging perspectives in the self-regulation literature (Rueda, Posner, & Rothbart, 2004; Zelazo & Cunningham, 2007). In concert with recent neurocognitive models (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001; Holroyd & Coles, 2002; Lieberman & Eisenberger, 2005), the ICM further contends that effortful control is a limited capacity resource that typically lies dormant, but can be recruited on a situation-specic basis. It is proposed that recruiting cognitive control in hostile contexts is somewhat particular to low trait anger individuals. There are at least three specic pathways by which effortful control would be of utility in hostile contexts. First, recruiting effortful control resources should enable the reappraisal of situational input in favor of a nonhostile interpretation (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Gross, 1998; Zillmann & Cantor, 1976). Second, the ICM posits that effortful control can be used to interrupt ruminative attention processes, thus allowing individuals to distract themselves from hostile thoughts (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Posner & Rothbart, 2000; Siegle, Carter, & Thase, 2006). Finally, effortful control resources can be used to suppress tendencies toward aggressive behavior (e.g., DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007) and expressive behavior indicative of anger arousal (e.g., facial expressions; Gross, 1998). Our emphasis on effortful control processes reects our general view that such processes are, in fact, of major importance in understanding why it is that some individuals are so much more reactive to hostile situational input than others. In summary, the ICM suggests that three cognitive processes namely, hostile interpretations, ruminative attention, and effortful controlare important in understanding individual differences in trait anger and reactive aggression. In the sections that follow, we review relevant data for each of these mechanisms considered separately. In each section, we rst consider data related to self- or informant-reported measures of the relevant cognitive process. We then consider data related to performance within implicit cognitive tasks. The latter sources of data not only allow us to rule out biases

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particular to self-report measures (Paulhus & John, 1998; Robinson & Clore, 2002) but also allow us to make more specic conclusions concerning the cognitive processes involved (Robinson, 2007).
Hostile Interpretations

Self-Report Evidence The ICM incorporates suggestions that high trait anger individuals are prone to hostile interpretations of relevant situational input. A large body of developmental data supports this link, in that individuals prone to reactive aggression perceive more hostile intent in circumstances where hostile intent is ambiguous (for reviews, see Crick & Dodge, 1994; Orobio de Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002). This tendency toward hostile interpretations has also been found among adults prone to anger and reactive aggression (Dill, Anderson, Anderson, & Deuser, 1997; Epps & Kendall, 1995; Graziano, Hair, & Finch, 1997; Graziano, JensenCampbell, & Hair, 1996; Hall & Davidson, 1996). Beyond the robust nature of this relationship, three further points can be made. First, research has converged on the idea that hostile interpretations are involved in the elicitation of anger (Rudolph, Roesch, Greitemeyer, & Weiner, 2004; C. A. Smith, Haynes, Lazarus, & Pope, 1993). Individuals who make more hostile interpretations also report higher levels of anger (Epps & Kendall, 1995; Graham, Hudley, & Williams, 1992; Hazebroek, Howells, & Day, 2001). Moreover, manipulations designed to increase the accessibility of hostile interpretations increase angry reactions to relevant input (Graham & Hudley, 1994; Meier & Robinson, 2004; Neumann, 2000). Finally, interventions designed to reduce this bias have been shown to reduce angry reactions to ambiguously hostile situational input (Hudley & Graham, 1993). Additionally, there are a number of sources of data converging on the point that the hostile interpretation bias increases aggressive behavior only to the extent that it increases anger. For example, Graham et al. (1992) found that anger mediated the relationship between hostile interpretations and aggressive behavior, and this same conclusion has also been supported in a meta-analytic review of the literature on attributions and emotion (Rudolph et al., 2004). Furthermore, studies have contrasted individuals who engage in reactive (i.e., anger-related) versus proactive (i.e., instrumental) forms

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of aggression. These studies have found that the hostile interpretation bias is specic to those who exhibit aggressive behavior for reactive, rather than proactive, reasons (Crick & Dodge, 1996; Dodge & Coie, 1987; see also Hubbard et al., this issue). Of nal note, there are sources of data consistent with the ICMs emphasis on the automatic and efcient nature of the hostile interpretation bias. Hazebroek et al. (2001) manipulated cognitive load, which should disrupt controlled inference processes relative to automatic ones (e.g., Gilbert & Krull, 1988). They found that the load manipulation had no effect on tendencies toward the hostile interpretation bias. On the other hand, factors that increase controlled processing among aggressive individuals have been shown to eliminate tendencies toward the hostile attribution bias. This includes naturally existing tendencies toward a more careful and prolonged information processing style (Dodge & Newman, 1981) as well as manipulations that encourage the participant to think about the situation from a more objective, third-person perspective (Dodge & Frame, 1982; Sancilio, Plumert, & Hartup, 1989). In sum, the hostile interpretation bias appears to involve automatic processes rather than controlled ones, a point that will be further substantiated next. Implicit Cognitive Evidence Above, we reviewed evidence consistent with the idea that the hostile interpretation bias is reliant on automatic processes. However, any form of self-report necessarily encourages controlled attention to the relevant information (Bargh, 1989; Lieberman, 2007). For this reason, it can be somewhat uncertain whether similar biases would occur with no instructions to report ones interpretation of the situation at hand. Thus, it would be of use to document hostile interpretation biases in the absence of any explicit instructions to make such interpretations. Several studies have taken up this challenge, and the results have been supportive of the idea that the traitlinked hostile interpretation bias is spontaneous in nature. To date, ve studies have used paradigms sensitive to the spontaneous nature of the anger-related hostile interpretation bias. Two of these studies used memory-based paradigms and found that aggressive individuals were more likely to recall ambiguously hostile sentences when provided with memory cues suggestive of a hostile interpretation (Zelli, Cervone, & Huesmann, 1996; Zelli, Huesmann,

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& Cervone, 1995). A third study found that aggressive individuals were more likely to indicate that a violent sentence was synonymous in meaning with a previously presented sentence in which hostile intent was actually ambiguous (Copello & Tata, 1990). These three studies converge on the suggestion that individuals high in reactive aggression spontaneously encode ambiguous material in a hostile manner, even when there are no direct instructions to form a social inference of any kind. Wingrove and Bond (2005) used quite different procedures, derived from the text comprehension literature (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998), and converged on similar conclusions. They asked individuals to read sentences, some of which were ambiguously hostile in nature. To the extent that such sentences are interpreted in hostility-related terms, participants should be faster to read subsequent sentences reinforcing a hostile (relative to a nonhostile) interpretation of the initial sentence. This pattern was found among individuals high in trait anger but not among individuals low in trait anger. Using an eye-tracking paradigm involving ambiguously hostile visual scenes, Wilkowski, Robinson, Gordon, and Troop-Gordon (2007) found conceptually similar results. In this case, individuals high in trait anger exhibited difculties processing nonhostile visual cues that were incompatible with an early hostile interpretation of the ambiguously hostile scene. Thus, evidence from a variety of cognitive paradigms suggests that individuals high in trait anger are prone to early hostile interpretations, which, in turn, should reinforce the likelihood of anger elicitation as well as behaviors reective of reactive aggression.
Ruminative Attention Processes

Self-Report Evidence Appraisal and attribution models of emotion elicitation (C. A. Smith & Lazarus, 1990; Weiner, 1986) have long contended that a biased tendency to interpret situations in a hostile manner should lead to increased anger and reactive aggression, consistent with the analysis presented above. However, the ICM also suggests that there are other cognitive processing tendencies involved in the determination of trait anger levels. In the present context, we concern ourselves with processes related to rumination, conceptualized in terms of tendencies to rehearse and dwell upon hostile information (Rusting

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& Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998). To the extent that one engages in such angry ruminations, tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression should be prolonged and intensied (Bushman, 2002). The idea that ruminative processes reinforce tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression has considerable support. Social cognitive studies have manipulated ruminative processes and, in turn, found that such manipulations prolong and intensify the effects of provocation on state anger and reactive aggression (Bushman, 2002; Bushman, Bonacci, Pedersen, Vasquez, & Miller, 2005; Rusting & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998). Similar results have been reported in the trait anger literature. In this literature, several self-report measures of dispositional tendencies toward anger-related rumination have been developed, and these measures invariably correlate positively with both trait anger and measures of reactive aggression (Caprara, 1986; Denson, Pedersen, & Miller, 2006; Linden et al., 2003; Sukhodolsky, Golub, & Cromwell, 2001). Moreover, self-report scales of anger-rumination tendencies also predict objective, laboratory-based measures of prolonged tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression. For example, Gerin, Davidson, Chistenfeld, Goyal, and Schwartz (2006) found that self-reported ruminative tendencies predicted delayed recovery from an anger induction, as manifest in prolonged levels of cardiovascular arousal following the induction. Other laboratory studies have employed objective measures of aggressive behavior and demonstrate that, following provocation, self-reported rumination predicts prolonged tendencies toward retaliatory aggression (Collins & Bell, 1997) and a greater likelihood of displaced aggression (Denson et al., 2006). In sum, there is considerable support for the idea that hostility-related rumination exacerbates tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression and does so in both state- and trait-related terms. The processing basis of rumination has often been uncertain, but in the next section we suggest that it likely relates to selective attention processes reinforcing hostile thoughts and feelings after they occur. Implicit Cognitive Evidence There are reasons for thinking that rumination involves selective attention processes favoring a particular type of affective input (Matthews & Wells, 1999; Segal, Teasdale, & Williams, 2004). In

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support of this point, manipulations of rumination encourage continued processing of a particular affective experience or stimulus (e.g., a prior negative emotion induction: see Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). Rumination manipulations are typically compared to those encouraging distraction, which are known to facilitate attentional disengagement from affective states or stimuli (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004). The ICM incorporates such considerations by suggesting that individuals high in trait anger should display selective attention processes favoring hostile information, which, in turn, should facilitate rumination in relation to them (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008a). Data are in support of this cognitive view of rumination. Several relevant studies have used variants of the emotional Stroop task, in which individuals are asked to name the color of stimuli while ignoring their affective meaning ( J. M. G. Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996). Difculties disengaging attention are inferred from slower color-naming latencies for a given type of affective stimulus (e.g., one involving hostile meaning). When tasks of this type have been used, it has been found that individuals higher in trait anger display delayed color-naming performance when the stimulus involves an angry facial expression (Putman, Hermans, & van Honk, 2004; van Honk, Tuiten, de Haan, van den Hout, & Stam, 2001) or a hostile word (Eckhardt & Cohen, 1997; P. Smith & Waterman, 2003, 2005; van Honk, Tuiten, van den Hout, et al., 2001). Visual search tasks have also been used. In such studies, it has been found that individuals higher in trait anger were slower to locate a neutral target stimulus when it was surrounded by distracters of a hostile nature (Cohen, Eckhardt, & Schagat, 1998; P. Smith & Waterman, 2004). Additionally, affective versions of the spatial cuing task (Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980) have been used. Such studies have found that violent criminals (P. Smith & Waterman, 2003) and individuals high in trait anger (Cohen et al., 1998; P. Smith & Waterman, 2003) were faster to respond to spatial probes replacing hostile relative to nonhostile stimuli. Such results again support the posited link of individual differences in anger and reactive aggression to selective attention processes favoring hostile stimuli. Beyond such evidence, the ICM contends that anger-related attention biases are likely to reect difculties disengaging attention from hostile stimuli. This suggestion is consistent with self-report

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data involving the importance of ruminative processes, which occur subsequent to an emotional induction (Bushman, 2002; Rusting & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998). This suggestion is also consistent with recent data of ours (Wilkowski, Robinson, & Meier, 2006). In the relevant study, we used a modied spatial cuing task that rst xated participants attention on a hostile word and then assessed their ability to disengage attention from such words. The results indicated that individuals with greater tendencies toward anger were slower to disengage attention from hostile stimuli. Thus, results of prior studies support the ICMs suggestion that hostility-related biases can be linked to the disengagement stage of attention, consistent with a ruminative process. We do note, however, that such results do not rule out earlier attentional biases that might occur prior to semantic processing (e.g., Dodge, 1991). In fact, the results of two studies are consistent with the idea that high trait anger individuals may sometimes exhibit attentional biases for angry faces even in cases in which emotional stimuli are subliminally presented (Putman et al., 2004; van Honk, Tuiten, de Hann, et al., 2001). Other research, however, has shown that such subliminal biases are circumscribed in nature. For example, subliminally ashed hostile words do not result in attentional biases related to trait anger (van Honk, Tuiten, van den Hout, et al., 2001). More research is thus needed to evaluate the scope and signicance of subliminal attentional biases. In the meantime, we suggest that data are most robust in linking trait anger to difculties disengaging attention from supraliminally presented hostile stimuli.
Effortful Control Processes

Self- or Other-Report Evidence Effortful control is a limited capacity resource that can be used to override tendencies deemed problematic to the wider goals of the individual (Posner & Rothbart, 2000). Rothbart (1989) rst suggested that superior abilities related to effortful control may be useful in overriding tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression. Typically, effortful control has been conceptualized in terms of a stable trait that is presumably constant across all situations (Eisenberg, Smith, Sadovsky, & Spinrad, 2004; Posner & Rothbart, 2000). Most of the data reviewed below follow from this trait view, though we will have more to say about this view below.

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Developmental psychologists typically assess effortful control abilities via parental or teacher reports. Studies assessing effortful control in this manner have consistently found an inverse relation between individual differences in effortful control and individual differences in both anger and reactive aggression. For example, inverse relations have been reported with respect to observer-reported trait anger (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994), observer-reported trait aggression (Eisenberg et al., 1996; Rothbart et al., 1994), and behavioral signs of anger within a frustrating situation (Calkins, Dedmon, Gill, Lomax, & Johnson, 2002). Moreover, parental or teacher reports of effortful control have been linked to more effective coping styles in potentially angering situations (Eisenberg, Fabes, Nyman, Bernzweig, & Pinuelas, 1994) and to higher levels of observer-reported agreeableness (Ahadi & Rothbart, 1994). In the adulthood literature, effortful control and related constructs are also frequently assessed by trait self-report. In relevant studies, it has been reported that higher levels of self-reported effortful control are inversely correlated with self-reports of anger and reactive aggression (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000). Similarly, higher levels of dispositional self-control have been found to be negatively correlated with trait anger (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). In more objective behavioral terms, high levels of selfreported impulsivity (which likely reect poor effortful control abilities; Watson & Clark, 1999) have been found to predict higher levels of reactive aggression in laboratory studies using well-validated behavioral tasks (Bettencourt et al., 2006). Thus, there are sources of support, in both developmental and adulthood personality literatures, for an inverse relation between effortful control and tendencies toward reactive aggression. Implicit Cognitive Evidence Effortful control can be assessed objectively through the use of behavioral tasks that measure an individuals ability to override an inappropriate response (Posner & Rothbart, 2000; Rueda et al., 2004). The classic Stroop (1935) interference task or the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (Milner, 1963) are frequently used in this regard. Cognitive studies have sought to examine the hypothesis that difculties in such tasks should be predictive of higher levels of anger and reactive aggression. Although mixed ndings have been reported

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(Kandel & Freed, 1982; Lilienfeld, 1992), a recent meta-analysis clearly establishes an inverse relationship between effortful control and antisocial behavioral tendencies (Morgan & Lilienfeld, 2000). The latter clinical studies have typically focused on abnormal variations in tendencies toward broad forms of antisocial behavior, including those particular to diagnosed psychopaths or prisoner populations (Morgan & Lilienfeld, 2000). There are reasonable concerns, then, as to whether such ndings are relevant to the specic domain of anger and reactive aggression, particularly among nonclinical samples. However, as indicated next, data of this type have increasingly been reported. Individuals displaying effortful control difculties (e.g., on Stroop conict trials) have been shown to be lower in agreeableness (Cumberland-Li, Eisenberg, & Reiser, 2004; Jensen-Campbell et al., 2002), higher in levels of aggression generally considered guin, Boulerice, Harden, (Giancola, Mezzich, & Tarter, 1998; Se ry, Pauze , Mercier, & Fortin, Tremblay, & Pihl, 1999; Toupin, De 2000), reactive aggression specically considered (Giancola, Moss, Martin, Kirisci, & Tarter, 1996), and trait anger (Gerardi-Caulton, 2000; Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000). Impressively, many studies have found that such inverse relations remain signicant even after controlling for ADHD status, IQ, and verbal or spatial abilities guin et al., 1999). In sum, there is increasing (Giancola et al., 1998; Se cognitive support for the idea that there is an inverse relation between effortful control abilities and trait anger. Toward a Dynamic View of Effortful Control Although effortful control is typically viewed as a trait that is somewhat constantly operative across various situational contexts, this trait-related view does not appear to be consistent with data reported in the cognitive neuroscience literature. From the perspective of such studies, effortful control is a resource that typically lies dormant until it is recruited in a situation-specic manner (Botvinick et al., 2001). For example, behavioral, electroencephalogram-related, and neuroimaging sources of data all converge on the point that the anterior cingulate cortex recruits frontal lobe resources in specic situations where cognitive conict has been detected (Carter et al., 1998; Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992; Kerns et al., 2004). From this dynamic perspective, it may be problematic to view effortful

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control as a resource that is constantly active across various situations (Lieberman, 2007; Lieberman & Eisenberger, 2005). Drawing from this dynamic view of effortful control, the ICM proposes that individuals differ in the extent to which activated hostile thoughts lead to the recruitment of effortful control resources. Whether due to differences in socialization, genetics, or motivation, the claim is that individuals low in trait anger have developed a habitual tendency to recruit effortful control resources following the activation of hostile thoughts. By contrast, it is suggested that high trait anger individuals fail to recruit effortful control resources in hostility-related contexts. Recent studies conducted by Wilkowski and Robinson (2007) support this dynamic processing view. In their rst investigation, these authors focused on the ability of individuals low in trait anger to override hostile thoughts within an implicit cognitive task. Participants were rst primed with hostile or nonhostile thoughts. The authors then assessed whether this priming manipulation inuenced subsequent word evaluations. When participants were given unlimited time to complete their ratings, individuals low in trait anger exhibited a reduced tendency toward hostility-related priming effects, relative to individuals high in trait anger. When participants were not permitted sufcient time to recruit and use effortful control, however, low trait anger participants now exhibited hostility-related priming effects equivalent in magnitude to those high in trait anger. Such ndings indicate that low trait anger individuals spontaneously down-regulate the inuence of hostile thoughts, but they can only do so only when there is sufcient time to recruit and use effortful control resources. The data of Wilkowski and Robinson (2007) were conceptually replicated in a subsequent set of studies reported by Wilkowski and Robinson (2008b). In these latter studies, hostile or nonhostile thoughts were rst activated prior to the assessment of effortful control. In these studies, classic measures of effortful controlbased on task-switching costs (Rogers & Monsell, 1995) and anker interference effects (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974)were administered. Following nonhostile primes, there were no differences by trait anger. As hypothesized, though, individuals low in trait anger exhibited higher levels of effortful control (i.e., a greater ability to override inappropriate responses) following hostile primes. In sum, our more recent results support prior studies (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2007) in

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suggesting that individuals low in trait anger recruit effortful control in a manner specically suited to the down-regulation of hostile thoughts. In general terms, results reviewed here support the following conclusions. Effortful control is best understood as a exible resource that is recruited in specic contexts. Those low in trait anger appear to recruit effortful control resources when there is the possibility of hostility-related biases toward anger and reactive aggression. By contrast, high trait anger individuals do not appear to recruit effortful control resources in a manner that would be of use in controlling their hostile thoughts. In sum, the ICM views the control of hostile thoughts as dependent on the recruitment of effortful control resources within hostile contexts, which we posit to be unique to low trait anger individuals.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Our review focused on the integrative role that the ICM plays in organizing the existing literature on trait anger and its cognitive processing basis. Consistent with appraisal and attributions theories (C. A. Smith & Lazarus, 1990; Weiner, 1986), the ICM suggests that automatic hostile attributions are fundamental to the elicitation of anger. However, the ICM suggests that there is much more to cognition than appraisals and attributions, thus addressing concerns that such frameworks are too narrow in accounting for the manner in which reactive aggression often occurs (Berkowitz, 1993; Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004). In the sections that follow, we turn our attention to broader issues that may be of use in further validating the ICM and extending the cognitive perspective advocated here.
Further Predictions of the Model

The ICM was primarily proposed to summarize and organize a diverse set of cognitive research pertaining to individual differences in anger and reactive aggression. However, we also believe that the model generates several novel and important predictions for future research. In making this point, we draw on Davidsons (1999) concept of affective style. According to this concept, individual differences in emotion can be decomposed in terms of separate parameters, such as frequency, intensity, and duration (see Schimmack,

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Oishi, Diener, & Suh, 2000, for evidence that these parameters of emotion function differently). In the present context, some individuals may experience the initial elicitation of anger rather frequently, but they may be quite adept at recovering from angry experiences quickly. For other individuals, however, the initial elicitation of anger may be more infrequent, but they may instead display considerable difculty recovering from the experience of anger once elicited. From this perspective, then, high trait anger individuals may be angry and aggressive for different reasons. The ICM offers a principled basis for understanding such distinct routes to anger and reactive aggression. From the perspective of the ICM, automatic hostile interpretations should primarily contribute to an understanding of individual differences in the frequency of anger elicitation. Specically, individuals possessing this bias should react with more anger to situations that are only ambiguously hostile in nature. By contrast, this processing bias should not be sufcient for understanding reactivity to clearly hostile situations (Dodge, 1980). Also, this processing bias should not be important in understanding the duration of the anger-related experience or, potentially, its intensity once aroused. On the other hand, the ICM proposes that individual differences in anger intensity and its duration are likely to be better captured by processes related to ruminative attention and effortful control. Rumination is thought to prolong and intensify angry reactions. In related terms, the recruitment of effortful control is thought to allow an individual to more effectively down-regulate the experience of antisocial affect over time. Thus, these cognitive processing tendencies should be better predictors of anger intensity and duration than the frequency of anger elicitation. Wilkowski, Robinson, and TroopGordon (2008) recently reported results consistent with this temporal set of predictions. Interactive predictions can also be made on the basis of the ICM. For example, the individual who displays both a hostile interpretation bias and effortful control deciencies should exhibit the most pronounced tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression. By contrast, individuals who recruit effortful control in hostile situations should be more capable of minimizing inuences of the hostile interpretation bias. In short, we advocate studies in which multiple processing mechanisms of the ICM are assessed among the same set of participants.

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Such work would better delineate the manner in which relevant processing biases additively or interactively predict tendencies toward anger. As indicated above, such work would be further informed by anger assessments capable of differentiating the frequency, intensity, and duration of anger.
Broader Considerations

The ICM is, by its very nature, a cognitive model, not directly concerned with noncognitive determinants of dispositional anger and reactive aggression. Although we believe that this focus is desirable and helps to sustain theoretical progress, it is also true that taking a broader perspective may help to link our processing framework to other important perspectives on anger and reactive aggression. In a previous review (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008a), we presented considerations in favor of the potential role of ICM processes in understanding genetic and early environmental inuences on anger and reactive aggression. We also suggested that the processes of the ICM may have relevance to understanding why it is that high trait anger individuals often create their own hostile interpersonal environment (Baron et al., 2007; T. W. Smith et al., 2004). Rather than revisiting such material here, we instead focus on a novel integrative effort related to potential links between cognitive and motivational determinants of anger and reactive aggression. In recent years, cognitive analyses of anger have met with some reasonable resistance (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004). Such criticisms often target views of the cognitive determinants of anger that are solely attributional in nature (Berkowitz, 1993). In the present case, it should be apparent that the ICM redresses this concern by focusing on other processes aside from attributional biases. However, it has also been suggested that a purely cognitive analysis may fail to capture the motivational basis of anger, which can be thought of in terms of approaching provoking individuals with the goal of extracting revenge (Blanchard & Blanchard, 1984; Moyer, 1976) or forcefully removing obstacles to goal attainment (Lewis, Sullivan, Ramsey, & Alessandri, 1992). In attempting to reconcile cognitive and motivational views of anger and reactive aggression, we rst make the point that motivational processes appear to be quite amenable to a social cognitive analysis of the present type (e.g., Gollwitzer, 1999; Wood & Neal, 2007). From

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this perspective, goals are viewed as structures stored in long-term memory, which can be activated by relevant situational input in order to guide behavior in a goal-congruent fashion (Bargh, 1990; Moskowitz, Li, & Kirk, 2004). This emerging view of motivational processes is important because it promises to better link motivation to its processing basis, an important research direction in the personality (e.g., Kuhl, 2000) and emotion (e.g., Lang, 1995) literatures as well. Following such views, we suggest that the motivational determinants of anger and reactive aggression are also amenable to a cognitively inspired analysis. In this connection, we propose that vengeance-related goals can be more easily activated by situational input among individuals high in trait anger. Data are consistent with this suggestion. Troop-Gordon and Asher (2005) presented children with scenarios involving escalating hostility over time and asked these children to report on their interpersonal goals at several points during the unfolding scenarios. These researchers found that aggressive children reported adopting vengeance-related goals earlier in the escalating cycle of hostility than did nonaggressive children. In another study, Harmon-Jones (2007) found that individuals high in trait anger were more likely to exhibit neural activity consistent with the activation of approach motivation in response to angering stimuli. In sum, the motivational literature provides initial support for the idea that vengeance-related goals are more easily activated by hostile situational input among dispositionally angry individuals. Beyond this conceptualization, we suggest that the cognitive processes highlighted by the ICM are likely to be involved in the activation, maintenance, and inhibition of vengeance-related goals. The activation of vengeance motivation seems to depend on interpreting the current situation as hostile in nature (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994; McCullough & Hoyt, 2002), and the ICM proposes that high trait anger individuals are more inclined to make such interpretations automatically. Second, it has been shown that rumination prolongs the activation of vengeance-related goals (McCullough, Bono, & Root, 2007), and this suggestion, too, is consistent with process-related data (DAlfonso, van Honk, Hermans, Postma, & de Haan, 2000; van Honk & Schutter, 2006). Finally, recent research has established the utility of effortful control processes in understanding states antithetical to vengeance motivation, such as interpersonal accommodation (Finkel & Campbell, 2001; Yovetich & Rusbult, 1994) and forgiveness (Thompson et al., 2005). Thus, while recog-

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nizing that further work is necessary, we suggest that the ICM may be of use in understanding how anger-linked approach motives are activated, maintained, and inhibited.
Applications of the ICM

Higher levels of trait anger have been linked to a variety of problematic outcomes, such as aggressive behavior, difculties in social relationships, and cardiovascular disease (Baron et al., 2007; Bettencourt et al., 2006; T. W. Smith et al., 2004). However, much more work is necessary to understand the mechanisms involved (alAbsi & Bongard, 2006; T. W. Smith et al., 2004). Here, we consider the role of cognitive processes in accounting for and potentially mediating such adverse outcomes. Multiple literatures have converged on the idea that the frequency of anger elicitation is less problematic than the intensity and duration of this experience. In the cardiovascular literature, increases in heart rate and blood pressure immediately following provocation are often thought to be adaptive, but prolonged cardiovascular reactivity is thought to be damaging to arterial tissue (Brosschet & Thayer, 1998; Linden, Earle, Gerin, & Christenfeld, 1997). In similar terms, the literature on close relationships has converged on the idea that the initial elicitation of anger in hostile situations is relatively normal and unproblematic (Gottman & Krokoff, 1989). By contrast, an inability to forgive transgressions (Bono, McCullough, & Root, 2008; Fincham, Hall, & Beach, 2006; Karremans, & van Lange, 2004) or harboring grudges over time (Fischer & Roseman, 2007; Gottman & Krokoff, 1989) has been shown to be truly problematic. Accordingly, the elicitation of anger, which we have linked to automatic hostile interpretations, is potentially problematic. However, we propose that it is far more problematic to ruminate on hostile thoughts (Gerin et al., 2006) or to be incapable of controlling ones anger after it arises (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008a). For such reasons, we generally emphasize the importance of ruminative attention and effortful control processes in understanding the adverse social- and health-related outcomes linked to anger.
CONCLUSIONS

Our review focused on the utility of an Integrative Cognitive Model (ICM) for understanding individual differences in anger and reactive

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aggression. The ICM identies three cognitive processesnamely, hostile interpretations, ruminative processes, and effortful control that are thought to determine individual differences in anger and reactive aggression. The review highlighted the integrative potential of this process-based model and also pointed to new research directions that should be vigorously pursued. The general conclusion is that anger and reactive aggression appear especially amenable to a process-based analysis.
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