Copello A G, Tata P R
Department of Psychology, St George's Hospital Medical School, London.
Br J Clin Psychol. 1990 Nov;29(4):417-28. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1990.tb00905.x.
The present study used an information-processing approach to investigate differences in interpretation of sentences which were ambiguous for violent or neutral meaning across three groups of subjects: violent offenders, non-violent offender controls and a group of non-offender controls. Subjects were presented with unambiguous and ambiguous sentences. The ambiguous sentences were selected so that they could be interpreted in either a threatening or neutral manner. A recognition memory test indicated that both offender groups were more likely to interpret violent ambiguous sentences in a threatening fashion, with the opposite being shown by the non-offender group. This difference was found to be significant. A control condition suggested that the interpretative bias was specific to violent material and not a general anxiety response. Furthermore, the tendency to infer violent threat was found to correlate with hostility. The results are discussed in relation to cognitive theories of anger and aggression.
