Martijn van Teffelen

Chapter 2 36 reduced measurement precision and a fragmentation of the research field (i.e., two researchers could study the same construct but name their construct differently). Note that hostility is investigated not only in the field of aggression, but also the fields of social psychology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. This underlines the need to be both more critical towards the use of language and to be very precise in choice of measurement instruments in these fields. This includes, for instance, the use of items that cross-capture hostility facets, while they pretend to measure only one facet (see Appendix B for examples of items that capture multiple facets). Hopefully, this study will stimulate joint efforts to move towards the standardized use of hostility and its subcomponents. Moreover, we hope to contribute towards moving the field of aggression research to a more valid and standardized assessment level by further stimulating and ameliorate the accurate and standardized assessment and operationalization of hostility.