Emotional effect of physical aggression among adults in the general population in a Canadian province.
The emotional effect of personal involvement in physical aggression was examined in a random sample of 1,753 adults from Ontario, Canada, using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (response rate of 67%). Respondents reported a range of emotional responses from feeling good or justified to feeling angry, upset, terrified, disgusted, hurt, and embarrassed. Open-ended responses regarding emotional response were rated by the authors for 149 incidents of aggression, which yielded five categories: (1) positive impact 4%, (2) no feeling or no effect 31%, (3) mildly negative 20%, (4) moderately negative 28%, and (5) severely negative 17% (Kappa statistic of interrater agreement=.77). The substantial proportion of incidents involving positive or no emotional response suggests that a greater understanding of aggression among individuals can be gained by the development and application of a quantitative measure of emotional response that reflects the full range of emotions (positive and negative), using dimensions identified in this study such as feeling upset, fear, and anger.
Wells
Samantha
S
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. swells@uwo.ca
Graham
Kathryn
K
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D002391:Catchment Area, Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011159:Population Surveillance; D012920:Social Behavior Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*