Perception of aggression and overt aggressive behavior

Investigated the relationship between thresholds for perception of aggressive cues and overt aggressive behavior in 86 male undergraduate students. Overt aggressive behavior was measured by the amount of shock the subject attempted to inflict on his presumed opponent. It was found that individuals with low thresholds for aggressive cues expressed less overt aggressive behavior while individuals with high thresholds for aggression expressed more overt aggression. Thus an inverse relationship was found with respect to perceptual recognition thresholds for aggressive stimuli and overt aggressive behavior. The implications of these findings for projective techniques and their relevance to perception as it relates to overt behavior were discussed.