Martijn van Teffelen

Chapter 3 62 p = .042). The direct relationship between narcissistic traits and unprovoked aggression was not significant ( p = .433). The findings suggest that perceived threat in the insult condition suppresses provoked aggressive responding before being provoked during CRTT in individuals with narcissistic traits. DISCUSSION This study compared social exclusion and insult provocations in terms of aggressive behavior, change in negative affect, and threat perception in a male community sample. We predicted comparable effects on all variables for both provocations. Moreover, we explored the impact of psychopathic and narcissistic traits on these variables. The main findings are in line with our prediction that social exclusion and insult are equal in terms of producing aggression (Hypothesis 1). This converges with earlier observations (Berkowitz, 1960; Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Twenge et al., 2001; Twenge & Campbell, 2003). Interestingly, the findings also show that social exclusion and insult produce negative affect and threat perception – our secondary outcome measures. This converges with earlier findings showing that social exclusion and insult predict negative affect (Blackhart et al., 2009; Buckley et al., 2004; Gilbert & Thompson, 1999; Jäncke, 1996; Lobbestael et al., 2008) and threat perception (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). One explanation for social exclusion and insult to equally produce aggressive behavior therefore is that they impact on similar mediators: the levels of negative affective state and perceived threat. Indeed, the present findings show that social exclusion and insult are equal in producing negative affect and threat perception. This is in line with the social information processing model of aggression, that predicts aggressive behavior when other people’s intentions are attributed as hostile (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Epps & Kendall, 1995) or when people are in a negative affective state (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000). Despite the distinctive nature of both provocation methods (i.e., negative social belonging versus negative intelligence feedback) they thus appear to equally produce aggression, negative affect, and perceived threat. This implies that future research may interchangeably implement any of the two methods to study psychologically provoked aggression. The findings further reveal no bivariate or multivariate associations between psychopathic traits and aggression, negative affect, and threat perception. Moreover, it was observed that negative affective change during social inclusion and insult suppressed aggressive responding curing CRTT (Hypothesis 2). The findings on the relationship between psychopathic traits and aggressive behavior converge with other studies (Bobadilla et al., 2013; Jones & Paulhus, 2010, provocation 1). The present findings diverge with two other studies. A first study reported