Feelings Of Hostility Research Articles

Psychosocial Risk Factors of Bulimic Symptomatology Among Female Athletes

Petrie and Greenleaf (2007) presented a psychosocial model of disordered eating for female athletes. Based upon the 2007 model, the present study examined four key psychosocial variables: internalization, body dissatisfaction, restrained eating, and negative affect, as predictors of bulimic symptoms among NCAA Division I female athletes. Two hundred four women (N = 204) participated and were drawn from three different universities and competed in 17 different varsity sports. After controlling for the effects of body mass and social desirability, hierarchical regression analysis showed that the psychosocial variables explained 42% of the variance in bulimic symptoms. In the full model, higher levels of body dissatisfaction, more dietary restraint, and stronger feelings of guilt were associated with bulimic symptomatology. Internalization of the sociocultural ideal as well as feelings of fear, hostility, or sadness were unrelated.

Anti-Gay Sentiment Among Adolescents in Belgium and Canada: A Comparative Investigation into the Role of Gender and Religion

Previous research has indicated that opposition toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trangender (LGBT) rights remains prevalent among Western populations. In this article, we investigate the determinants of anti-gay attitudes among adolescents in two liberal democracies, Belgium (n = 6,330) and Canada (n = 3,334). The analysis indicates that hostile feelings toward LGBT rights are particularly widespread among boys, while the effects of socioeconomic status and parental education remain limited. Various religious denominations proved to have a strong and significant negative impact on tolerance, with especially high scores for Islam. Religious practice, too, contributes to a negative attitude toward LGBT rights. The consequences of these findings with regard to tolerance for gay rights among Islamic youth in Western democracies are discussed.

“Yes, But Suppose Everyone Turned Gay?”: The Structure of Attitudes toward Gay and Lesbian Rights among Islamic Youth in Belgium

Various quantitative studies have suggested the occurrence of hostile feelings toward LGBT rights among Islamic communities in Western societies. We know less, however, about the structure of these attitudes among Belgian Islamic youth. Based on focus groups and in-depth interviews, we try to disentangle these elements. The interviews suggest that feelings toward LGBT rights are not based on a discourse of individual rights but are considered within the background of dense family relations, strongly linked to notions of family honor and the duty of the individual to contribute to the stability of the family and the community. While the respondents endorsed the notion that the basic scriptures of Islam prohibit homosexual behavior, there was more disagreement about what this entails for the moral status of the individual involved in this kind of behavior. It is suggested that this form of disagreement might serve as a leverage point for the development of a more tolerant outlook toward LGBT rights among Islamic communities.

Rejection Sensitivity and the Rejection–Hostility Link in Romantic Relationships

Rejection sensitivity is the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to rejection. In response to perceived social exclusion, highly rejection sensitive people react with increased hostile feelings toward others and are more likely to show reactive aggression than less rejection sensitive people in the same situation. This paper summarizes work on rejection sensitivity that has provided evidence for the link between anxious expectations of rejection and hostility after rejection. We review evidence that rejection sensitivity functions as a defensive motivational system. Thus, we link rejection sensitivity to attentional and perceptual processes that underlie the processing of social information. A range of experimental and diary studies shows that perceiving rejection triggers hostility and aggressive behavior in rejection sensitive people. We review studies that show that this hostility and reactive aggression can perpetuate a vicious cycle by eliciting rejection from those who rejection sensitive people value most. Finally, we summarize recent work suggesting that this cycle can be interrupted with generalized self-regulatory skills and the experience of positive, supportive relationships.

The Hitman Study

This article explores commonly discussed theories of violent video game effects: the social learning, mood management, and catharsis hypotheses. An experimental study was carried out to examine violent video game effects. In this study, 103 young adults were given a frustration task and then randomized to play no game, a nonviolent game, a violent game with good versus evil theme (i.e., playing as a good character taking on evil), or a violent game in which they played as a “bad guy.” Results indicated that randomized video game play had no effect on aggressive behavior; real-life violent video game-playing history, however, was predictive of decreased hostile feelings and decreased depression following the frustration task. Results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but do suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management.

“Other People's Clothes”: Homosociality, Consumer Culture, and Affective Reading in Edith Wharton's <em>Summer</em>

For a novel typically viewed as the narrative of heroine Charity Royall's illicit affair, pregnancy, and subsequent marriage, Edith Wharton's Summer presents a wide range of homosocial encounters--between Charity and her North Dormer peers (some of whom appear in the novel and some of whom are only named), between Charity and women glimpsed in mirrors and on streets, and between Charity and women viewed as others to the norms of late-nineteenth-century heteromaternal femininity--spinsters, prostitutes, female professionals, and differently abled women (Kent 16). (1) Feminist scholarship on the novel has rotated around the question of Charity's illicit affair with visiting architect Lucius Harney, her pregnancy, and her subsequent marriage to her guardian, Lawyer Royall, seen on the one hand as quasi-incestuous and sick (Amnions 133) and, on the other hand, as an act of generosity that restores Charity's virtue. (2) More recently, critics have turned their attention to Wharton's engagement with the racial thinking of the period, as witnessed through the novel's representations of the ostensibly dysgenic Mountain community, its depiction of the possibilities of women's reproductive choice, and Charity's ultimate decision to keep Harney's child, which Jennie A. Kassanoff reads as Wharton's effort to perpetuate Harney's patrician blood through the vessel of Charity's working-class body (145-49). (3) Despite the richness of these readings, however, both traditional feminist and contemporary racialized readings have tended to sidestep Charity's relations with women, as well as the burgeoning rural middle class of which she is a part, viewing her quest for place in primarily heterosocial and non-class-specific terms. On first glance, Charity's identity seems almost completely determined by her relations with men: Separated from her birth mother as a child and brought down from the Mountain by Lawyer Royall to the bleak New England town of North Dormer, she becomes pregnant with Harney's child during their summer affair but knows that marriage to him is impossible. After a brief return to the Mountain, where she learns that her mother is dead, she accepts a marriage proposal from Royall and returns to North Dormer to embark on an apparently bleak future. This essay recasts Charity's narrative of limited mobility in light of her conflicts with women, showing how her efforts to appropriate a middle-class identity through consumer culture implicate her in a series of antagonistic homosocial relationships. Charity's interactions with these female others are dominated by emotions of envy, irritation, and frustration, feelings that recent scholarship on affect in nineteenth-century literature has identified as characteristic of middle-class identify formation. As Stephanie Foote has argued, class and gender are affective positions, deeply structural while also deeply personal (66). (4) Because Summer typically communicates women's anxieties over class and status through bodily reactions rather than open verbal expression, critics have yet to pay sufficient attention to the novel's depiction of tensions among women of different class positions. (5) Reading for affect demonstrates how the struggles of class identity formation--especially for Charity, a lower-middle-class subject surrounded by characters at almost every level on the class spectrum--register in bodily and emotional terms, forming a part of the novel's depiction of everyday life of which characters, and even their creator, may be unconscious. (6) Examining both inter- and intraclass homosocial tensions illuminates the effects of the unequal distribution of cultural and economic capital on working-class and middle-class subjects, who are typically held responsible for the hostile feelings they generate. (7) Summer witnesses Charity's envious negotiation for place on a ladder of feminine status through her consumer practices; similarly, it demonstrates the implication of other women--particularly marginalized women of the working and lower-middle classes--in the new economies of desire that early-twentieth-century consumer culture made palpable. …

Bracing for the worst, but behaving the best: Social anxiety, hostility, and behavioral aggression

Social anxiety is marked by viewing social interactions as competitive, hypervigilance to signs of social threat, and avoidance of interactions that may result in social rejection. Therefore, social anxiety should relate to: (1) greater hostile feelings toward others, (2) heightened perceptions of hostility in others, and (3) relatively low levels of violence and aggression. To date, however, little is known about these relationships. In four independent non-clinical samples (total N = 2643), we examined relationships between social anxiety, hostility, and aggression using a range of measures that included both self-report and behavioral assessments. In Study 1, social anxiety correlated positively with feeling hostile toward others. In Study 2, social anxiety correlated positively with hostile perceptions of others. In Study 3, social anxiety was related to less positive attitudes toward behaving violently toward one's relationship partner. In Study 4, social anxiety was related to less aggressive behavior, as indicated by less intense and prolonged noise blasts delivered to a fictitious opponent. Taken together, these four studies paint a picture of socially anxious people as bracing for the worst by feeling and perceiving hostility in the social environment, but behaving the best by refraining from aggression and violence.

Frozen in Time: Idealization and Parent-Blaming in the Therapeutic Process

Contemporary theory and culture can lead a therapist to view a client’s positive feelings towards parents as defensive idealization, while negative or hostile feelings may be seen as “deeper” and more important. This article suggests that both idealization of and critical feelings about parents can serve as defenses against other painful emotions and both are developmentally necessary. Contemporary neurobiological and attachment research indicate that “talk therapy” helps individuals manage emotions. This work can be derailed if anger is privileged over idealization. Clinical examples illustrate these ideas and show how unpacking both critical and overly positive attitudes can encourage development. Clients increase their capacity to tolerate a wider range of feelings, maintain a consistent and cohesive sense of self, and build meaningful relationships. Therapists’ countertransferential identification with clients’ parent-blaming and a not uncommon desire to reduce complex and confusing experiences to a more manageable subset of emotions are also addressed.

Hostility‐ and gender‐related differences in oscillatory responses to emotional facial expressions

Hostility is associated with biases in the perception of emotional facial expressions, such that ambiguous or neutral expressions tend to be perceived as threatening or angry. In this study, the effects of hostility and gender on the perception of angry, neutral, and happy faces and on the oscillatory dynamics of cortical responses elicited by these presentations were investigated using time-frequency decomposition by means of wavelet transforms. Feelings of hostility predisposed subjects to perceive happy and neutral faces as less friendly. This effect was more pronounced in women. In hostile subjects, presentation of emotional facial expressions also evoked stronger posterior synchronization in the theta and diminished desynchronization in the alpha band. This may signify a prevalence of emotional responding over cognitive processing. These effects were also more pronounced in females. Hostile females, but not hostile males, additionally showed a widespread synchronization in the alpha band. This synchronization is tentatively explained as a manifestation of inhibitory control which is present in aggressive females, but not in aggressive males.

Threat Perceptions and Feelings as Predictors of Jewish-Israeli Support for Compromise with Palestinians

A representative sample of Israeli Jews (N = 504) completed a survey assessing attitudes towards compromise in the Israeli—Palestinian conflict. Support for compromise was well predicted (R = .63) by a combination of four scales: perception of collective threat from Palestinians, perception of zero-sum relations between Palestinians and Israelis, personal fear of Palestinians, and sympathy towards Palestinians. Feelings of hostility towards Palestinians did not make an independent contribution to this prediction. As hypothesized, respondents who perceived high collective threat and zero-sum relations were much less supportive of making concessions to Palestinians. However, respondents who indicated feeling personal fear were in regression analysis slightly more supportive of compromise. Sympathy toward Palestinians was associated with more support for compromise. Additionally, religiosity was strongly associated with decreased support for compromise. However, entering threat perceptions and sympathy into the equation substantially reduced the predictive value of religiosity, indicating that psychological mechanisms underlie, at least in part, the tendency of more religious respondents to show less support for making concessions to Palestinians.

Global Environmental Policy and Global Trade Policy

The global climate regime, as represented by the Kyoto Protocol, may be on a collision course with the global trade policy regime, as represented by the WTO (World Trade Organization). Environmentalists fear that international trade will undercut reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as dirty production migrates to non-participating countries, a phenomenon known as leakage. Meanwhile businesspeople fear the effects on their own competitiveness of the same phenomenon. These fears have now become prominent in the policy-making process. In early 2008, legislation to enact long-term targets for reduced emission of greenhouse gases included provisions for possible barriers against imports from countries perceived as non-participating -- in both Washington, DC (where the bills have not yet passed) and in Brussels (where the EU Commission Directive has gone into effect). Such provisions could be interpreted as violations of the rules of the WTO, which poses the nightmare scenario of a WTO panel rejecting a major country's climate change legislation. In light of the hostile feelings that such a scenario would unleash, it would be a nightmare for the supporters of the WTO and free trade as much as for the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol and environmental protection. The issue is just the latest and largest instance of fears among many environmentalists that the WTO is an obstacle to their goals in general. The issue transcends institutions. For the critics, the WTO is a symbol of globalization, and their fears attach also to that larger phenomenon. The first part of this paper discusses the broader issue of whether environmental goals in general are threatened by free trade and the WTO. The second half of the paper focuses exclusively on the narrower question of trade aspects of nations' efforts to implement climate change policy and whether they are likely to come into conflict with the WTO.

Feelings and Reactive Behavior Generated by Self-Recognized Inferiority in Appearance in Adolescents

The present study investigated relationships between feelings and reactive behaviors of adolescents and young adults about inferiority in their appearance. The participants, junior high school students (7th, 8th, and 9th grades ; N=207 ; average age, 13.16), senior high school students (N=188 ; average age, 15.72), and university students (N=150 ; average age, 20.33), completed a questionnaire about recognition of inferiority in their appearance, related feelings, and related reactive behavior. Factor analysis of the items on related feelings resulted in the extraction of 6 factors : dissatisfactory feelings, sad feelings, hostile feelings, self-affirmative feelings, yearning feelings, and self-reproach feelings. Factor analysis of the items on reactive behaviors resulted in the extraction of 7 factors : evasion of others, direct efforts, aggression toward others, pastime, neglect, desire for approval from others, and vicarious compensation. In all age groups, direct efforts were related to yearning feelings ; aggression toward others and desire for approval from others were related to hostile feelings ; pastime was related to dissatisfactory feelings ; and neglect and vicarious compensation were related to sad feelings and self-affirmative feelings.

La maison dans L'Oeuvre de Julien Green: des Espaces Heureux aux espaces menaçants

In contrast to the rapturous and meaningful recollections experienced in the dwellings where he lived – painstakingly recorded in his Journal and Autobiographie – the fictional world of J. Green is, instead, unusually lacking in moments of happiness such as those portrayed by Bachelard in his Poetique de l’espace. This novelist creates scenarios where all sorts of indescribable forces seem to converge, thus creating an atmosphere of anxiety and fear. Structured as a labyrinth and adorned with eerie and menacing objects, houses in Green’s fiction arouse feelings of hostility and threat. [...] la maison revee doit tout avoir. Elle doit etre une chaumiere, un corps de colombe, un nid, une chrysalide. (BACHELARD, 1981: 26).

Cortisol and Cardiac Reactivity in the Context of Sex Discrimination: The Moderating Effects of Mood and Perceived Control

The high incidence of stressor-related pathologies among stigmatized groups has been associated with experi- ences of discrimination. The present study demonstrated that following a mood priming manipulation (anger vs. sadness), an acute sex discrimination event influenced women's (N=61) salivary cortisol levels as well as systolic (SBP) and dia- stolic (DBP) blood pressure. Among women primed to feel sad, cortisol levels declined over the course of the experimen- tal session, likely reflecting a decline of arousal. However, among those primed to feel angry the cortisol levels were sus- tained over the session, especially if they perceived the possibility of rectifying their failed status (control). As well, SBP and DBP increased following the discrimination experience irrespective of perceived control. Among women primed to feel angry, feelings of hostility were associated with higher SBP and heart rate. Evidently, sex discrimination affects stress-reactive physiological systems among women, and might thus influence vulnerability to pathology.

La Asamblea Constituyente de Bolivia: de la oportunidad a la amenaza

The Constituent Assembly (CA) was born with an idea widely shared by the population that it would be the historical opportunity of a “pact” between the Bolivians to live together being different, and it concluded being as an scenario for confrontation. A project for the Constitution was approved, and the disobedience to it has already been announced. The feelings of collective hostility and active intolerance between different groups of society have grown, while political processes develop, legally unchallengeable, but that cannot be put to right due to the dismantlement of the Constitutional Tribunal. The institutions are becoming more deinstitutionalized, the authority of the State more defied, and the government, in the facts, has lost jurisdiction in parts of the nation. The attempts of a post-constituent “dialogue” have failed, and the possibilities of success have far away. In such an environment of high volatility and uncertainty, the future is less perceived with hope, and more and more as a threat against the stability of the country.

The sum of all heresies: the image of Islam in Western thought

Current global tensions and the spread of terrorism have resurrected in the West a largely negative perception of Islamic society, an ill will fueled by centuries of conflict and prejudice. Shedding light on the history behind these hostile feelings, Frederick Quinn's timely volume traces the Western image of Islam from its earliest days to recent times. Quinn establishes four basic themes around which the image of Islam gravitates throughout history: the Prophet as Antichrist, heretic, and Satan; the Prophet as Fallen Christian, corrupted monk, or Arab Lucifer; the prophet as sexual deviant, polygamist, and charlatan, and the Prophet as Wise Easterner, Holy Person, and dispenser of wisdom. A feature of the book is a strong portrayal of Islam in literature, art, music, and popular culture, drawing on such sources as Cervantes's Don Quixote; the Orientalism of numerous visual artists; the classical music of Monteverdi and Mozart; and more recent cultural manifestations, such as music hall artists like Peter Dawson and Edith Piaf; and stage or silver screen representations like The Garden of Allah, The Sheik, Aladdin, and The Battle of Algiers. Quinn argues that an outpouring of positive information on basically every aspect of Islamic life has yet to vanquish the hostile and malformed ideas from the past. Conflict, mistrust, and misunderstanding characterize the Muslim-Christian encounter, and growing examples of cooperation are often overshadowed by anger and suspicion. In this important book, Quinn highlights long-standing historical prejudices but also introduces the reader to some of the landmark voices in history that have worked toward a greater understanding of Islam.

Negative affect and anger rumination as mediators between forgiveness and sleep quality

Research indicates that forgiveness of interpersonal transgressions relates to better sleep quality, whereas maintaining feelings of anger and hostility relates to poorer sleep quality. However, the mechanisms explaining these relationships have yet to be determined. We examined whether negative affect and anger rumination mediate the relationship between forgiveness of others and sleep quality using a sample of 277 undergraduates from a medium-sized Midwestern Catholic university. Participants completed self-report questionnaires assessing forgiveness of others (situational and dispositional), sleep quality (nocturnal sleep and daytime fatigue), negative affect (depression and anxiety), and anger rumination. Using structural equation modeling, we found that negative affect and anger rumination mediated the relationship between forgiveness and sleep quality through two indirect pathways. In one pathway, negative affect mediated between forgiveness and sleep quality. In the second pathway, both negative affect and anger rumination functioned as mediators. Implications for clinicians and researchers are discussed.

Social Support and Feelings of Hostility Among Released Inmates

There is broad consensus that the strains of imprisonment and unsupported release affect offenders’ mental health and operate to the detriment of their chances of successful reintegration. Drawing on data from 208 male inmates, the authors examine the mediating and moderating influences of social support on the links between inmates’ perceptions of prison conditions and other background variables on parolees’ feelings of hostility—a factor theoretically linked to reoffending—upon release. The results demonstrate that social support partially or completely mediates background characteristics and conditions the influence of prison perceptions on released inmates’ levels of hostility.

Parental responses to infant crying: The influence of child physical abuse risk and hostile priming

Objective Managing a crying infant is a challenge universally faced by new parents. This study examined whether parental interpretations, feelings, and behaviors following exposure to a 2-minute videotaped segment of a crying infant varied as a function of child physical abuse (CPA) risk and exposure to cues of hostility (i.e., hostile priming). Method Participants included 84 general population parents (52 low and 32 high CPA risk) with valid and complete protocols. It was predicted that (1) negative trait ratings, (2) feelings of hostility, and (3) ability to modulate grip strength would differ across CPA risk groups (high vs. low) and priming conditions (hostile vs. neutral). Results As expected, high, compared to low, CPA risk parents rated the crying infant more negatively and reported higher levels of hostile feelings after watching the crying infant video. Hostile priming independently increased feelings of hostility, such that high CPA risk parents who were primed with hostile words reported higher levels of hostile feelings relative to all other conditions. Hostile priming also was modestly associated with increased use of excessive force when parents attempted to produce a half-strength grip; however this difference was apparent only among high CPA risk parents. Conclusions High, compared to low, CPA risk parents rated the crying infant more negatively and reported higher levels of hostile feelings after watching the crying infant video. Hostile priming independently increased hostile feelings and was modestly associated with use of excessive force in the hand grip task among high CPA risk parents.

Violent crime and substance abuse: A medico-legal comparison between deceased users of anabolic androgenic steroids and abusers of illicit drugs

Several case reports and survey studies have indicated that abuse of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) often leads to increased aggressiveness and feelings of hostility that may occasionally trigger violent behaviour. Other observations indicate that many users of AAS also abuse alcohol and/or various illegal substances. Since substance abuse is a well-known risk factor for violent behaviour, it could be that violence committed by AAS users might, at least in many cases, actually be caused by abuse of other drugs. In order to examine this possibility further here, the criminal histories (in terms of incidences of convictions) of deceased users of AAS with (AASpos-subst.pos) and without (AASpos-subst.neg) signs of abuse of other illegal substances were compared to the corresponding histories of deceased users of illicit substances testing negatively for AAS (subst.pos-AASneg) at the time of autopsy. The risk of being convicted for a crime against property was significantly higher in the subst.pos-AASneg group than in either the AASpos-subst.neg or AASpos-subst.pos groups (RR = 0.048 versus 0.408). At the same time, the risk of being convicted for a crime of violence was at least as high for the two AAS-positive groups as for the AAS-negative group. Furthermore, when compared with the first 3 years after the first criminal conviction, a pronounced increase in the proportion of incidence of violent crimes and a marked reduction in the proportion of incidence of crime against property was observed during the 3-year period immediately preceding death only among the AASpos-subst.neg subjects. In conclusion, the incidence of violent crime among users of AAS without signs of other drug abuse was comparable to the corresponding incidences for drug addicts without AAS use. This observation suggests that the violent criminality observed among AAS users is not confounded in any systematic fashion by abuse of other drugs. The findings also indicate that use of AAS in certain predisposed individuals might cause a high rate of violent crimes, especially if the use of AAS is combined with the use of other illegal substances.