Martijn van Teffelen

Chapter 1 12 a symptom, rather than a distinct clinical syndrome. That is, aspects of hostility are included in the definitions of intermittent explosive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder and bipolar disorder. In addition, hostility has been positively associated with many other disorders such as major depressive disorder (Judd et al., 2013), panic disorder (Fracalanza et al., 2014) and generalized anxiety disorder (Deschênes et al., 2012). In line with this, several authors propose that hostility should rather be considered a transdiagnostic construct, or, in other words, a construct that cuts across existing categorical psychiatric classifications (Cassiello-Robbins & Barlow, 2016; Fernandez & Johnson, 2016; Vidal-Ribas et al., 2016). DIMENSIONS OF HOSTILITY Perhaps the lack of a ‘hostility disorder’ reflects the lack of consensus on the definition of hostility throughout the years. The field is therefore not short of jingle (i.e., using the same term for different constructs) and jangle (i.e., using different terms for the same construct) fallacies. Bandura (p. 2, 1973) even referred to it as a “semantic jungle”. To clearly define hostility roughly two theoretical perspectives have been put forward. First, the unidimensional perspective conceptualizes hostility as one construct that includes the interrelated elements of cynical beliefs about others and the world, hostile attribution bias (i.e., the tendency to interpret emotionally ambiguous scenarios as hostile), angry emotional states, and aggressive behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Barefoot, 1992; Chaplin, 1982). Second, the multidimensional perspective conceptualizes hostility in terms of a domain consisting of two or more lower-level facets (Buss, 1961; Smith, 1992; Spielberger et al., 1985). Empirical evidence generally supports the multidimensional perspective. That is, factor analytic studies have reported the presence of two (e.g., expression and experience) to four (e.g., cognitive, affective, physical-behavioral, and verbal-behavioral) factors (Buss & Durkee, 1957; Buss & Perry, 1992; Fuqua et al., 1991; Kopper & Epperson, 1996; Maier et al., 2009; Martin et al., 2000; Musante et al., 1989; Riley & Treiber, 1989). It seems however, that there is little consensus on the ‘optimal’ factor structure of the hostility construct. FEEDING THE FLAME: PROVOKING HOSTILITY Wielding the best possible working definition of hostility at hand, scholars have invested a vast number of resources in developing and testing ways to provoke hostility. Understanding the situational factors that provoke hostility is of vital importance to ultimately reduce it. Provocations that reliably predict aggression (i.e., hostile behavior) are, for instance, electric