Threat Effects on Cognitive Systems: Testing Links to Aggression Proneness

The biobehavioral study of aggression has implications for expanding our understanding of transdiagnostic processes that increase risk for disinhibited behaviors. Towards this end, our study tested tenets from the process model of aggression (Verona & Bresin, 2015) that the predictability of threat would differentially alter cognitive networks, including attentional alerting and executive control. Further, we examined whether threat-related changes in cognitive functioning are associated with self- and informant-reports of aggressive actions. Using event-related potential (ERP) measures of cognitive-attentional processes, 143 community individuals participated in a well-validated and translational threat manipulation (NPU task; Schmitz & Grillon, 2012) while completing the Attention Network Test (Posner et al., 1980). Analyses revealed that unpredictable threat quickened alerting-related reaction time, whereas predictable threat interfered with processing of flanker task stimuli. The results, however, failed to show reliable relationships between aggression proneness and threat-related cognitive alterations. The findings fit with a broader literature on cognitive and behavioral outputs of threat activation and provide fruitful avenues for better understanding threat-related aggression.