Neuroscience
After the horror of a shooting spree, it sometimes emerges in the media that the killer was a member of a shooting club. Unsurprisingly, calls often then ensue for shooting club membership to be discouraged or even banned. Two assumptions underlie such calls: first, that shooting clubs attract aggressive people to their membership, and second, that contact with guns increases aggression. Now Maria Hagtegaal and colleagues have tested whether this is true, by comparing the self-reported aggression levels and personality profiles of 59 members of Dutch shooting associations and 67 non-member, age-matched controls. Their key finding was that shooting club members are less aggressive and impulsive than controls, not more, and that most of them became a member for relaxation, or to socialise, whereas only a small minority (6 per cent) joined the club to let off steam or vent their frustration.
Obviously a major weakness of this study is its reliance on self-report. But the researchers recognised this and included a measure of "social desirability" - the tendency for participants to answer in a way that casts them in the best possible light. The social desirability measure included impossibly good items like, "Are all your habits good and desirable ones?". Strong agreement with such statements indicates dishonest answering. The shooting club members displayed more social desirability than the controls, but crucially, their lower aggression and impulsivity remained even after adjustment for their higher social desirability.
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Nagtegaal, M., Rassin, E., & Muris, P. (2009). Do members of shooting associations display higher levels of aggression? Psychology, Crime & Law, 15 (4), 313-325 DOI: 10.1080/10683160802241682
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Are shooting club members more aggressive than most?
After the horror of a shooting spree, it sometimes emerges in the media that the killer was a member of a shooting club. Unsurprisingly, calls often then ensue for shooting club membership to be discouraged or even banned. Two assumptions underlie such calls: first, that shooting clubs attract aggressive people to their membership, and second, that contact with guns increases aggression. Now Maria Hagtegaal and colleagues have tested whether this is true, by comparing the self-reported aggression levels and personality profiles of 59 members of Dutch shooting associations and 67 non-member, age-matched controls. Their key finding was that shooting club members are less aggressive and impulsive than controls, not more, and that most of them became a member for relaxation, or to socialise, whereas only a small minority (6 per cent) joined the club to let off steam or vent their frustration.Obviously a major weakness of this study is its reliance on self-report. But the researchers recognised this and included a measure of "social desirability" - the tendency for participants to answer in a way that casts them in the best possible light. The social desirability measure included impossibly good items like, "Are all your habits good and desirable ones?". Strong agreement with such statements indicates dishonest answering. The shooting club members displayed more social desirability than the controls, but crucially, their lower aggression and impulsivity remained even after adjustment for their higher social desirability.
_________________________________
Nagtegaal, M., Rassin, E., & Muris, P. (2009). Do members of shooting associations display higher levels of aggression? Psychology, Crime & Law, 15 (4), 313-325 DOI: 10.1080/10683160802241682Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Olympic Athletes Reveal Their Mental Strategies
It's reassuring to learn that even the most elite athletes can suffer from mental frailties. Maurizio Bertollo and colleagues interviewed 13 members of Italy's 2004 pentathlon squad and a common theme to emerge was the curse of so-called "ironic...
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Secure ward managers may be able to reduce patient aggression by carefully monitoring the sex ratio of the staff relative to the patients. That's according to Susan Knowles and colleagues who've found that mental health patients held on a medium...
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Swinging in the back yard Pull up in your fast car Whistling my name Open up a beer and Say get over here And play a video game Video Games ------Lana Del Rey from Fig.1, Hosokawa & Watanabe (2012). It's you, it's you, it's all for...
- More News From Com Sci
Here's another new article by two of my Communication Science colleagues: Measuring State and Trait Aggression: A Short, Cautionary Tale (ebsco link). By: Farrar, Kirstie; Krcmar, Marina. Media Psychology, 2006, Vol. 8 Issue 2, p127-138. Abstract:...
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