Gender differences in emotional risk for self- and other-directed violence among externalizing adults.
OBJECTIVE
Women and men generally differ in how frequently they engage in other- and self-directed physical violence and may show distinct emotional risk factors for engagement in these high-impact behaviors. To inform this area, we investigated gender differences in the relationship of emotional tendencies (i.e., anger, hostility, and anhedonic depression) that may represent risk for other-directed violence (i.e., physical fighting, attacking others unprovoked) and self-directed violence (i.e., self-injury, suicide attempts).


METHODS
The ethnically diverse sample consisted of 372 adults (252 men and 120 women age 18-55) with a history of criminal convictions. Facets of emotional risk assessed with the Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Warren, 2000) and Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (Watson et al., 1995) were entered simultaneously as explanatory variables in regression analyses to investigate their unique contributions to other- and self-directed physical violence in men and women.


RESULTS
Analyses revealed that anhedonic depressive tendencies negatively predicted other-directed violence and positively predicted self-directed violence in men and women, consistent with a model of depression in which aggression is turned inward (Henriksson et al., 1993). Gender differences, however, emerged for the differential contributions of anger and hostility to other- and self-directed violence. Trait anger (i.e., difficulty controlling one's temper) was associated with other-directed violence selectively in men, whereas trait hostility (i.e., suspiciousness and alienation) was associated with self- and other-directed violence among women.


CONCLUSIONS
The divergent findings for trait anger and hostility underscore the need to examine gender-specific risk factors for physical violence to avoid excluding potentially useful clinical features of these mental health outcomes.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 East Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. naomisadeh@gmail.com
Naomi
N
Sadeh
Shabnam
S
Javdani
M Sima
MS
Finy
Edelyn
E
Verona
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012306:Risk; D016728:Self-Injurious Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013406:Suicide, Attempted / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*
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