Direction Of Hostility Questionnaire Research Articles

Personality types and recidivism among Borstal trainees

A cluster analysis of the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire, Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire and Psychological Screening Inventory scores from 181 delinquents at Deerbolt Borstal, England, revealed four personality types which were labelled ‘Withdrawn’, ‘Normal’, ‘Disturbed’ and ‘Truculent’. A 3-year reconviction follow-up showed that the groups differed in terms of recidivism. Sixty-four percent of the Withdrawn group reconvicted whilst 87% of the Normal, 79% of the Disturbed and 76% of the Truculent group reconvicted. Controlling for the influence of number of previous convictions the Withdrawn group differed significantly from the other groups in terms of recidivism. The results are discussed with reference to similar results obtained in a previously reported study in a detention centre.

Psychophysiological ante-natal predictors of post-natal depressed mood.

Forty-seven women were studied during the course of pregnancy in an attempt to predict which of them would later rate themselves as suffering from depressed mood post-natally. Psychometric and physiology measures were used in the three trimesters of pregnancy and six weeks after birth. The psychometric measures used ante-natally and post-natally comprised the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire, and Locus of Control Scale, the DSSI/SAD sub-scale to measure anxiety, and the Zung Self-Rating Scale to measure depression. Psychophysiological measures used water heart-rate and blood pressure. Post-natal ratings of depression were associated with a high ante-natal score on overall hostility. Women with high anxiety and hostility ratings had a more pronounced response to the sound of a baby crying than to noise of similar frequency and intensity. This more pronounced heart response was also related to later post-natal depression ratings. However, by far the most useful predictive measure was the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire: its predictive power in the first trimester of pregnancy was almost as good as in the third trimester.

The comparability of two hostility measures in a normal group

Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ) and Personality Deviance Scale (PDS) scores were obtained from a group of normal females in order to compare the major hostility dimensions of extrapunitiveness and intropunitiveness. Statistically significant correlations resulted but only of a moderate order even when the apparently more pathological subscales were omitted from the HDHQ.

Parents of abused children in Greece: Psychiatric and psychological characteristics: Results of a pilot study

The psychological and psychiatric characteristics of the parents of 15 abused children were studied by means of clinical psychiatric evaluation and psychological tests (MMPI, Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire, Navran's Dependency Scale, Rosenweig's Picture Frustration Test, WAIS). It was found that almost all the parents were suffering from some type of personality disorder ranging from mild to severe with some features of anxiety and reactive depression. Three of the parents (two mothers and one father) were psychotic. The psychological assessment further demonstrated that most of the parents had low IQ scores, were immature, impulsive with strong dependency needs, low tolerance to frustration and high hostility scores. Most of the parents were coming from the lower socioeconomic groups, had poor education, were deprived in their childhood and their own families were broken and chaotic. The findings and the significance of the study are presented in the light of the absence of previous research in this field in Greece.

Hostility scores in australian women with special reference to the battered wife

The Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ) of Caine, Foulds and Hope (1967) was administered to 177 Australian women for comparison with Australian women who seek to escape a battering husband. The present sample scored as more hostile than the English standardization sample, but less hostile than the battered wives of the comparison sample on PH (paranoid hostility), G (guilt), and H (total hostility). Several significant correlations were found. It is argued that negative correlations between age and H, and between age and AH (urge to act out hostility), reflected social learning effects; a negative correlation between age and G was interpreted as demonstrating guilt reduction in adulthood as conflicts which peak in adolescence are resolved. Scores on CO (criticism of others), SC (self‐criticism), PH. G and H emerged as significantly higher in women of lower social class. Exposure to more aggressive models and to more frustrating situations are suggested explanations for these effects. 1980 Australian Psychological Society

Hostility on and off opiates

Elliot et al. 1 administered meperidine, a synthetic narcotic analgesic, parenterally and orally, to inpatient narcotic drug users who had been off drugs for 4 weeks. A recognized speech content analysis method was used by a “blind” scorer to measure hostility before and after drug administration. They found significant decreases in the scores of both outward overt hostility and hostility inward when plasma meperidine levels were high. They concluded that “the findings are consistent with the hypothesis that narcotic abuse is enhanced through the psychological effects of these drugs.” The hypothesis tested here was that heroin addicts would have lower hostility scores on the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ) 2 when taking opiates than when drug-free.

Battered Wives: A Controlled Study of Predisposition

The possibility that women who are battered by their husband are predisposed to this treatment is examined in a controlled study of 30 such women and 30 control subjects. A number of father-related items distinguished between the two groups: in the battered group fathers had more mental illness, were more violent and tended to be more strict. Battered women more often witnessed violence by their husband to other prior to marriage. All participants were rated for hostility using the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ). Both groups emerged as significantly and globally more hostile than a group of normal subjects.

An assessment of hostility in a population of adolescents.

In the course of an epidemiological survey of adolescents, the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire was administered to 6,709 persons aged 13 to 18 years, representing 89% of secondary school students in Hobart, Tasmania. Extrapunitiveness was found to decrease substantially between the ages of 15 and 17 years in both sexes. Intropunitiveness also decreased, although to a lesser extent. Girls were less extrapunitive and more intropunitive than boys over the whole age range. These findings are discussed in relation to their clinical relevance and to the understanding of psychiatric disorder in adolescents.

Attitudes of psychiatric patients to staff roles and treatment methods: A replication and extension

A questionnaire dealing with attitudes toward staff roles and treatment methods was administered to a group of 191 psychiatric patients and their responses subjected to a rotated principal components analysis. The first three components accounted for the same proportion of the overall variance as did those obtained in an earlier study. The first components, emphasizing high regard for physical treatments and formal interpersonal relationships, were essentially the same in both studies. The second and third components, however, showed important differences; our second component dealt with the psychological and social aspects of patienthood, and our third reflected a critical attitude toward doctors. Scores on the first component were significantly associated with age, score on the Hysteroid-Obsessoid Questionnaire and social class. Women scored higher than men on the second component and scores on the third were related to total hostility scores on the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire and to schizophrenia. Differences between diagnostic groups on the first component could be attributed almost entirely to the groups' mean ages.

Hostility in Drug Dependent Individuals: Its Relation to Specific Drugs, and Oral or Intravenous Use

Although a number of studies have suggested that hostility and drug dependence may be related, there are few systematic studies of this issue. Using the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire, the present study compares several drug-dependent groups of patients. Results showed that the intravenous in-patient group was more hostile on several variables than their out-patient counterparts, and also more hostile than an oral in-patient group. Barbiturate abusers were found to have high levels of hostility; amphetamine abusers were the least hostile group, and narcotic dependent patients were intermediate between the two. Correlations between scales of the HDHQ were all positive, and most were both high and statistically significant, suggesting that hostility represents a relatively generalized trait in drug-dependent subjects. The results are discussed both in terms of patient selection factors--the differential pressures on different types of patients, and in terms of direct drug effects. It is suggested that the hostility of drug-dependent patients may represent an important problem of personal functioning and may require special attention in treatment programmes.

The pattern of hostility in affective illness.

Many theoretical accounts of the affective disorders, in particular those by writers of the psychodynamic schools, have emphasized the central role of hostility and aggression. However, there have been very few objective studies of the expression of aggression in patients with affective disorders. Of these, two have used the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ,) of Foulds (Foulds et al., 1960; Foulds, 1965). Mayo (1967) tested 24 depressed patients before and after treatment and found a significant decrease after recovery, both in their level of general punitiveness and in their level of intropunitiveness. The psychotically depressed patients scored significantly higher than the neurotic depressives. Philip (1971) tested depressed women, and found that extra-punitiveness did not change over time, but that improved patients were less intropunitive than those who showed no improvement. No studies have reported the hostility pattern of manic patients.

Assessing punitiveness with the hostility and direction of hostility questionnaire (HDHQ).

Foulds' theory of personality (1965) lays stress on the need to consider the individual as a person in relation to others. Where the ability to enter into mutual personal relations with others denotes the mature individual, egocentricity in thinking and behaving marks out the immature. One feature of egocentricity is the need to apportion blame in any given situation, either to other people or to the self, so that Foulds found punitiveness a useful attitudinal measure of egocentricity. Rosenzweig's (1934) terms extrapunitiveness and intropunitiveness were used by Foulds, Caine and Creasy (1960) to identify punitiveness directed outward on to other people and inward on to the self; these authors devised subscales, three extrapunitive and two intropunitive, to tap various aspects of punitive expression. From the pattern of correlations between the subscales, they tentatively posited a factor of general hostility, while pointing out that the correlations were such as to indicate that the extrapunitiveness subscales were measuring something different from the intropunitiveness subscales.

The development and use of the hostility and direction of hostility questionnaire.

The HDHQ, a questionnaire designed to assess hostility or punitiveness, consists of items culled from the MMPI. These are arranged in 5 scales which measures extrapunitive and intropunitive aspects of hostility. The theoretical underpinning of the test lies in Foulds' theory of personality and personal illness and research has been carried out to investigate the statistical relationships existing between the scales. The HDHQ has been used in many projects; psychiatric patients, prisoners and attempted suicides being among the populations studied. The results obtained from such projects have suggested ways in which the test could be improved. A reinterpretation of the existing scales is one possibility while the elimination of some items and the regrouping of items into new scales is also feasible. In any such development a balance must be made between making changes indicated by the results of research and retaining the older format for which a large body of knowledge and expertise has accrued. High priority must be given to the collation and integration of the many studies, frequently unpublished, in which the instrument has been used.