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Objective: Numerous provocations cause aggressive behavior. However, different provocation procedures are rarely directly compared. This study examined whether two different provocations (i.e., social exclusion and insult) were equally effective in terms of producing aggressive behavior, negative affective change and threat perception. As psychopathic and narcissistic personality traits may moderate provoked aggression, the current study also explored the differential impact of psychopathic and narcissistic traits on these variables. Method: A male (N = 94) community sample was randomly allocated to receive negative social belonging feedback (i.e., social exclusion) or negative intelligence feedback (i.e., insult) by a confederate. Aggressive behavior was measured using a competitive reaction time task after provocation. Here, aggressive behavior before first provocation (i.e., noise blast) by the opponent reflected unprovoked aggression, whereas aggressive behavior after first provocation reflected provoked aggression. Negative affect was measured pre- and postprovocation, and threat perception was measured postprovocation. Results: Results showed that both provocations were equally effective in producing aggressive behavior, negative affective change, and threat perception. Explorative analysis revealed that increased threat perception suppresses initial aggressive responding under the condition of agentic threat in narcissistic people. Also, decreased negative affective change during provocation suppressed aggressive responding in people with psychopathic traits. Conclusions: The findings suggest that both provocations can interchangeably be implemented to study provoked aggression. Emotional blunting may protect against detrimental provocation effects in people with psychopathic traits. Under conditions of agentic threat narcissistic traits related to withholding aggressive responding after first provocation, lashing out when a new threat emerges.

Interpersonal problems are key transdiagnostic constructs in psychopathology. In the past, investigators have neglected the importance of operationalizing interpersonal problems according to their latent structure by using divergent representations of the construct: (a) computing scores for severity, agency, and communion (“dimensional approach”), (b) classifying persons into subgroups with respect to their interpersonal profile (“categorical approach”). This hinders cumulative research on interpersonal problems, because findings cannot be integrated both from a conceptual and a statistical point of view. We provide a comprehensive evaluation of interpersonal problems by enlisting several large samples (Ns = 5,400, 491, 656, and 712) to estimate a set of latent variable candidate models, covering the spectrum of purely dimensional (i.e., confirmatory factor analysis using Gaussian and nonnormal latent t-distributions), hybrid (i.e., semiparametric factor analysis), and purely categorical approaches (latent class analysis). Statistical models were compared with regard to their structural validity, as evaluated by model fit (corrected Akaike’s information criterion and the Bayesian information criterion), and their concurrent validity, as defined by the models’ ability to predict relevant external variables. Across samples, the fully dimensional model performed best in terms of model fit, prediction, robustness, and parsimony. We found scant evidence that categorical and hybrid models provide incremental value for understanding interpersonal problems. Our results indicate that the latent structure of interpersonal problems is best represented by continuous dimensions, especially when one allows for nonnormal latent distributions., General Scientific Summary This study suggests that interpersonal problems are best characterized by continuous differences in severity and interpersonal style (i.e., agency and communion), and not by “types” of people.