Uncovering the hierarchical structure of self-reported hostility.

Martijn W Van Teffelen,Jill Lobbestael,Marisol J Voncken,Frenk Peeters

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239631

Abstract

Hostility and other related terms like anger and aggression are often used interchangeably to describe antagonistic affect, cognition, and behavior. Psychometric studies suggest that hostility consists of multiple separate factors, but consensus is currently lacking. In the present study we examined the hierarchical structure of hostility. The hierarchical structure of hostility was examined in N = 376 people (i.e., a mixed community and highly hostile sample), using both specific and broad hostility self-report measures. A series of Principal Components Analyses revealed the structure of hostility at five levels of specificity. At intermediate levels, hostility can consistently be expressed in affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. At the most specific level, hostility can be expressed in terms of Angry Affect; Hostile Intent; and Verbal, Relational, and Physical Aggression. The pattern of associations showed significant convergence, and some divergence with broad and more specific hostility measures. The present findings stress the need for novel instruments that capture each hostility facet separately to reduce conceptual confounding.

Highlights

In psychological research, human antagonistic behavior and its’ related cognitive-affective experiences are often operationalized by the terms anger, hostility, or aggression
These results suggest that the STAXI-2T, AQH, Forms of Aggression questionnaire (FOA) and PID-5H are significantly positively interrelated
We predicted that hostility can be defined as a construct that can be interpreted at different levels of specificity or, in other words, that hostility shows a multidimensional hierarchical structure

Summary

Introduction

Human antagonistic behavior and its’ related cognitive-affective experiences are often operationalized by the terms anger, hostility, or aggression. Others reported three-factor solutions, distinguishing affect, behavior and cognition [14, 18, 19]– referred to as the ABC-model [20], or the AHA-model (i.e., anger, hostility, aggression) [3]. Within the construct of narcissism it has been shown that seemingly diverging results of factor analytic studies (i.e., showing different ‘optimal’ factor solutions) converge into a five-layered hierarchical model in which lowerorder facets become more and more specific with each hierarchical layer [23]. Factor-analytic evidence tends to converge with a multidimensional view of the hostility construct, but previous work shows differences in number and content of factor solutions. The main expectation is that a multidimensional hierarchical structure will be uncovered

Participants

Procedure

Results

Discussion