You deliberately provoked me!: Hostile attribution bias and its link to personality functioning and aggressive behavior

Objectives: Lower levels of personality functioning are associated with an increased tendency to interpret social interactions as provocative or harmful, often resulting in aggressive reactions. Hostile attribution bias (HAB) is closely linked to aggression, frequently arising from these biased interpretations. However, it remains unclear whether personality functioning predicts aggressive reactions only in provocative situations, or if it also influences responses in non-provocative contexts. Additionally, the role of HAB in explaining this relationship is not well understood. This study aims to investigate whether personality functioning predicts aggression solely in response to provocation or across a range of situations, and whether HAB mediates this link. Methods: This study employed the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP), a behavioral measure of aggression, with 319 participants (197 women). We assessed personality functioning using the Level of Personality Functioning Scale - Brief Form (LPFS). Additionally, we implemented the Word Sentence Association Paradigm-Hostility (WSAP-H) to measure hostile attribution bias. Results: The results revealed that hostile attributions significantly explained the relationship between lower personality functioning and increased aggression only in response to provocation. This highlights the role of HAB as a cognitive mechanism through which lower personality functioning contributes to aggressive behavior, particularly in situations where individuals perceive provocation. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the tendency to react aggressively is more closely linked to heightened sensitivity to perceived threats rather than a general misinterpretation of social cues. These results have important implications for psychotherapeutic interventions targeting aggression and hostile attributions, emphasizing the need for interventions that address both personality functioning and cognitive biases.