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Aggression

Aggression

Humans engage in aggression when they seek to cause harm or pain to another person. Aggression takes two forms depending on one’s motives: hostile or instrumental. Hostile aggression is motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain; a fight in a bar with a stranger is an example of hostile aggression. In contrast, instrumental aggression is motivated by achieving a goal and does not necessarily involve intent to cause pain (Berkowitz, 1993); a contract killer who murders for hire...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 19, 2026

The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress

The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress

Published on: July 4, 2013

Rorschach measures of aggression: a laboratory-based validity study.

Aaron J Kivisto¹, Scott A Swan

¹Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. AaronKivistoPhD@gmail.com

Journal of Personality Assessment

|August 22, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The Rorschach Aggressive Content (AgC) score correlated with laboratory aggression, but other Rorschach aggression measures did not predict self-reported violence history in young men.

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Area of Science:

Psychology
Forensic Psychology

Background:

Archival research has established Rorschach aggression scores.
Existing Rorschach aggression measures include Exner's Aggressive Movement (AG) and Meloy and Gacono's Aggressive Content (AgC), Aggressive Past (AgPast), and Aggressive Potential (AgPot).

Purpose of the Study:

To complement archival research by examining Rorschach aggression scores in a controlled laboratory setting.
To investigate the association between Rorschach aggression measures and self-reported violence history.

Main Methods:

Utilized a controlled laboratory-based aggression paradigm.
Employed self-report measures of violence history.
Sample consisted of 35 undergraduate males (average age 19.38).

Main Results:

Only the Aggressive Content (AgC) Rorschach score was positively associated with in vivo aggression (r = .40, p = .02).
No Rorschach aggression measures significantly correlated with self-reported violence history.
Several trends approaching significance were observed between Rorschach measures and violence history.

Conclusions:

The Aggressive Content (AgC) score shows potential as a measure of overt aggression.
Rorschach aggression measures may not effectively capture past violent behavior.
Further research is needed to explore theoretical and methodological implications.