The Angry Thoughts Scale: Initial Development in a Mexican Sample

Abstract

The aim was to develop a reliable, valid measure of angry thinking for use with Mexican adults. Exploratory factor analysis in a sample of university students (n = 757) yielded three factors: (a) 10 items involved self-instructions for anger control (e.g., I think to solve the problem); (b) five items tapped highly negative, denigrating, pejorative thoughts (e.g., She/he is an idiot); and (c) four items involved thoughts of revenge (e.g., I will do something against others). Factors replicated and cross validated in another large sample (n = 757) and were the same for men and women. Alpha reliabilities (αs = .79–.88) were high across samples and genders, as well as test-retest reliabilities (rs = .71–.82). Revengeful and pejorative thinking correlated highly, and formed small negative correlations with anger mitigating thoughts. Angry thoughts scales formed logical small to moderate correlations with trait and state anger, anger suppression, outward anger expression, physically aggressive anger expression...