Abstract
High aggression is common and costly for mental health problems in young adults. Because communication is a universal part of social relationships, including conflicts with others, it could be a possible target for mediating aggression. This study aimed to evaluate whether the virtual reality (VR)-based communication modification program can be utilized for aggression management. Fifty-eight individuals with high aggression (n = 30) and with low aggression (n = 28) completed psychological assessments associated with aggression and functional communication, and they participated in the program, consisting of the three tasks: exploring the communication style, practicing functional communication, and expressing empathy. The participants’ selections and their visual analog scale scores, in response to questions in the tasks, were collected as behavioral data. Results indicated that the high aggression group selected blaming dysfunctional communication style more frequently than the low aggression group. VR-based parameters, expected to reflect dysfunctional communication-related characteristics, showed significantly different correlations with aggression-related traits between the two groups. These findings show that our program may accurately represent an individual’s aggressive traits and elicit the appropriate reaction.
Highlights
High aggression is common and costly for mental health problems in people, especially adolescents and young adults [1,2]
The high aggression (HA) and low aggression (LA) groups showed a significant difference in the total Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) scores
The empathetic feeling scores showed no significant correlation with any psychological scale scores in the HA group, the emotional intensity scores were positively correlated with the anger control-out scores
Summary
High aggression is common and costly for mental health problems in people, especially adolescents and young adults [1,2]. High aggression in criminal cases and aggression that occurs in everyday relationships, such as gaslighting and dating violence, have been emphasized in social and economic costs [7,8]. It is essential to develop effective interventions for managing aggression in daily life. Despite the diversity of situations in which everyday aggression can be revealed, most programs for managing aggression in daily life have focused on specific issues, such as dating violence, making it difficult to be provided generally [13,14]. In order to manage the various aspects of day-to-day aggression, programs will need to have high accessibility, low-cost characteristics, and universal elements that can be used in common and various situations
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