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This paper examined empirically the value of a conceptual model in which emotional stability and agreeableness contribute to engagement in aggression and violence (EAV) indirectly through irritability, hostile rumination and moral disengagement. Three hundred and forty young adults (130 male and 190 female) participated in the study. The average age of participants was 21 at time 1 and 25 at time 2. Findings attested to the role of basic traits (i.e. agreeableness and emotional stability) and specific personality dispositions (i.e. irritability and hostile rumination) in predisposing to EAV and to the pivotal role of moral disengagement in giving access to aggressive and violent conduct. In particular, the mediational model attested to the pivotal role of emotional stability and agreeableness in contributing directly to both hostile rumination and irritability and indirectly to moral disengagement, and to EAV. Agreeableness and hostile rumination contribute to moral disengagement that plays a key role in mediating the relations of all examined variables with EAV. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Some social maladjustment in children is understood from a new perspective focusing on the cyclical interaction between personality variables and social psychological processes in the development of risk mechanisms. A profile of originally marginal deviations between a child and peers on selected behavioural tasks and personality functioning is a risk indicator of eventual significant perturbations in social adjustment. The aggregation of reciprocal effects between the child's behaviour and the reactions of teachers and peers becomes amplified over time into increasingly greater deviations and more negative reactions. Our multi-causal model centres the ‘at-risk’ child within a complex psycho-social system and identifies a series of processes that influence behaviour along this path of transformation from marginal to significant social deviation. Empirical support for aspects of this model is emerging from a long-term, longitudinal study with Italian school children.

Human aggression is a complex phenomenon operating at multiple levels. Converging evidence distinguishes "hot" aggression, impulsive and emotionally-centered, from "cool" aggression, cognitively based and instrumental. The correspondence of these aggressive response patterns with individual differences in Propensity toward Aggression was investigated. Our data (from 477 Italian adults) map ten of these aggression indicators into the personality space defined by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality. The quadrant containing most of these variables is defined by Emotional Instability (the negative pole of Emotional Stability) and Hostility (the negative pole of Friendliness). Factor analysis uncovered two factors that accounted for nearly 60 percent of the variance in Propensity toward Aggression: Emotional Responsivity and Positive Evaluation of Violence. Practical implications for issues of health and disease, violence, and interventions for different forms of adults' and children's aggression are outlined. (Abstract Adapted from Source: European Journal of Personality, 1996. Copyright © 1996 by John Wiley and Sons) Aggression Causes Personality Adult Aggression Foreign Countries Italy Emotional Response Hostility Cognitive Behavioral 03-00

Two studies have been performed in the frame of the Big Five model to describe personality. In the first study, the most useful adjectives for describing personality have been selected, trying to adopt a procedure as objective and empirically driven as possible. The resulting pool of adjectives (n = 492) has been administered to a sample of 274 subjects to verify the emergence of the Big Five in the Italian context. In the second study the pool of original adjectives has been reduced to 260 adjectives selecting the most representative terms (with regard to the factorial structure that has emerged). This pool of 260 adjectives has been administered to a sample of 862 subjects, together with the NEO‐PI and the BFQ to facilitate the interpretation of the resulting factorial structure. Results showed the emergence of an Italian Big Five factorial structure that resembles the ‘canonical’ Big Five, although some of the factors, viz. Agreeableness and Emotional Stability, emerged as ‘blended’ dimensions.

Italian male school children, ranging in age from 7 to 10 years, were identified as at‐risk children on the basis of self‐reports, teacher questionnaires, and peer nominations assessing aggression, emotional instability, and pro‐social behaviour. Together with a normal control sample, these children participated in two studies guided by attribtional theory. In Study 1, following teacher emotional feedback of anger or sympathy for failure, attributional inferences regarding low ability or lack of effort as the cause of that failure were rated. In Study 2, controllable and uncontrollable causes of a social transgression were given, and participants rated the anticipated anger of the ‘victim’ and their intention to withhold or reveal the cause. Strong effects for both populations that were consistent with attributional predictions were reported. In addition, differences between the inferences, expectations, and behavioural intentions of the populations were found, with at‐risk children being less likely to perceive sympathy as a cue for low ability, and anticipating more anger from others following a transgression, particularly when there was a ‘good’ (i.e. uncontrollable) reason for the broken social agreement. It was contended that the results support the social‐cognitive approach to the understanding of mechanisms of risk and deviancy.

The recent history of personality psychology is rapidly reviewed with the aim of indicating significant cues of the progress which has taken place and of the problems which are still pending. In this regard, a three‐stage model of progress provides the arguments which introduce personality psychology into the domain of ‘complexity’. Readmission of individual differences in the investigation of basic processes, attention to marginal perturbances in between non‐significant deviations, and use of circumplex models to make sense of multiple facets of phenomena are indicated as viable avenues to the complexity of personality psychology.

Person‐situation interaction is considered in the light of a redefinition of the notions of consistency, stability, coherence, and specificity. A research program able to combine the study of individual differences with experimental research in a developmental perspective is recommended. Findings from research on aggression are presented to support this approach.

A number of studies are reported which sustain the importance of individual differences in the study of aggression. Irritability, emotional susceptibility, dissipatio—nrumination, tolerance toward violence, and proneness to guilt feelings provide a better understanding of the various forms of aggression. Prosocial behaviour, emotional instability, and physical and verbal aggression proved to be important indicators to children's more general adjustment. To go beyond the traditional paradigm of research on aggression a structural and interactive—interpersonal analysis of aggression is recommended. Aggression as a unitary phenomenon is called into question. Instead, it is stated that the various facets of aggression find an explanation and acquire meaning within the context of global personality development and functioning.

This study investigated the possible influence of mood and emotional vulnerability on recall. Mood was induced by projecting highly emotionally laden slides. In the first experiment, 64 female subjects, rated low or high on emotional vulnerability, were tested on recall of mood‐congruent, mood‐incongruent and neutral words, under mood induction and non‐mood induction conditions. Emotionally low‐vulnerable subjects recalled more mood‐congruent than mood‐incongruent words in the mood induction condition, whereas the opposite was the case in the non‐mood induction condition. Highly vulnerable subjects recalled more mood‐congruent than mood‐incongruent words in the non‐mood induction condition and fewer mood‐congruent words in the mood induction compared with non‐mood induction condition. The results are discussed in terms of ‘mood congruence’ (to explain low‐vulnerable (LV) subjects' performance) and in terms of ‘trait congruence’ (to explain highly‐vulnerable (HV) subjects' performance). In a second experiment, which investigated LV and HV subjects' galvanic skin responses to highly‐ and low‐emotionally laden slides, the highest values were those for HV subjects when exposed to emotional slides. The different activation of LV and HV subjects led us to reconsider previous reasoning regarding mood congruence and trait congruence in the light of the inverted U theory.