The Role of Personality Traits and Situational Factors as Determinants of Aggression

Forty-eight women students from Qatar University (M= 21.73, SD=4.43) completed the 200-item ZKA Personality Questionnaire, which measures aggressiveness, neuroticism, activity, extraversion and sensation-seeking, and the 7-item trait anger scale from the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ). Following an experimental situation that triggered anger by an interpersonal insult, the participants were randomly assigned to an anger-induced group (experimental condition) or a nonanger-induced group (control condition). Afterwards, the participants completed the hot sauce paradigm to assess aggressive behavior.


INTRODUCTION
Considerable research has been conducted to identify risk factors for aggression. Studies have raised an important question regarding the role of individual differences in aggressive behavior. Previous studies have associated personal characteristics such as self-esteem, narcissism, and personality traits with aggression [1]. However, it is also well known that stressful situations increase aggression [2]. Research has shown that aversive events produce a negative affect, which, in turn, is Concerning its relationship with aggression, previous research has shown that participants in an angry mood displayed more aggressive attitudes than participants in a neutral mood [18]. Recent research has also demonstrated that participants who were made to feel anger had more dominanceseeking and higher levels of aggression [19].
To induce anger in psychology laboratories, experimental psychologists have used several techniques, such as films [20], cover stories (e.g., interpersonal insults) [21]. In the present study, we used an interpersonal insult technique to induce state anger.
The majority of social psychologists accept the statement that the role of the situation is more important than personality in predicting aggressive behavior [22]. The role of the effects of personality traits on aggressive behavior is still limited, with no constant evidence of these effects [23]. However, there has been a greater research focus placed on the impact of situational factors on aggression [24]. One of the most important tasks is integrating both personality traits and situational factors in predicting aggressive behavior [22]. The present study tested both the role of personality traits and situational factors as determinants of aggressive behavior within the same experiment. This study is important because it enhances our understanding of the predictors and mechanisms that determine aggressive behavior.

Present Research
In the present study, forty-eight college women students from Qatar University completed the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire and the trait anger scale. Then, they were randomly assigned to either an 'anger' condition or 'nonanger' condition. Anger was induced by using an interpersonal insult. Afterwards, the participants completed the hot sauce paradigm to assess their aggressive behavior. We predicted that the situation in which the participants were made to feel angry would be more powerful than personality traits in determining aggressive behavior.

Participants
The participants consisted of forty-eight women college students (M age = 21.73, SD = 4.43, age range: 17-42) from Qatar University. The participants were randomly allocated to either an anger-induced group (n = 24) or a nonanger-induced group (n = 24). The participants did not receive any course credits or payments for their participation. The sampling method employed opportunity-based sampling by asking students within the College of Arts and Science, whether they wished to take part in the study.

Trait Anger
Trait anger was assessed using the trait anger scale from the BPAQ [27]. This scale contains seven items. The Arabic version of this scale was used [28]. The responses were rated on a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (4). The internal consistency was satisfactory (α = 72).

State Anger
State anger refers to short-lasting outbursts of anger that are temporary. Previous studies have used the interpersonal insult technique to induce state anger in participants [29,30]. In our procedure, the participants were presented with 20 colored images of various styles of Western clothing and asked to rank the images based on their personal opinion of fashion. Then, they were informed that their choices would be evaluated by their peers and vice versa. The researcher provided the images selected by a peer and requested from the participant to write one paragraph on the quality of the participant's choices of fashion ranking. Then, the researcher left the lab with the images selected by the participant to be evaluated by the peer. After five minutes, the researcher returned with the participant's selected images with the feedback made by the peer, along with the text written by the participant about the images selected by the peer. Half of the participants received a text containing negative feedback (e.g., "This is one of the worst fashion choices I have seen in my life" and "What bad taste!", i.e., the anger-induced group). Previous research has shown that this procedure makes participants angry [11]. The other half of the participants received positive feedback (e.g., "This is one of the best fashion choices I have seen in my life.", i.e., the nonanger-induced group).

Aggressive Behavior
The hot sauce paradigm was used to measure aggressive behavior [31]. The participants were randomly assigned to play the role of "food administrator" in the experiment; they prepared a dish of rice for the same ostensible peer in the other room, who played the role of "food taster". Then, the participants were provided with a dish of rice and four bottles of sauces and were told that they could put a sauce on the rice, that they could choose the heat intensity of the sauce (ranging from least hot (1) to extremely hot (4)) and that the food taster (e.g., the peer who criticized their images choices) hates spicy food [32]. The participants were also told that they could not blend the sauces and that the peer must consume the complete amount of sauced rice on the dish. In addition, the subjects could choose to taste how hot the sauces were before choosing one by using a small spoon. The researcher left the room for five minutes and then returned to take the dish of sauce to the peer. A digital scale was used to measure the differences between the quantities of sauces used. This paradigm is a wellvalidated measure of aggression [33]. Aggressive behavior was calculated by multiplying the hotness of the sauce selected by the weight in grams [34].

Procedures and Analysis
The participants were tested individually. They were told that the research was based on studying the relationship between women's taste in fashion and emotions. Upon their arrival, the participants completed a consent form. Then, the ZKA-PQ scale and the trait anger scale of the BPAQ were completed. Afterwards, the participants were induced emotionally by providing them with feedback on their choice of fashion style rankings based on the images shown to them. Then, they completed the hot sauce paradigm to measure their aggressive behavior. Finally, a suspiciousness questionnaire was given that assessed whether the participants knew the true purposes of the study before being debriefed, they were asked the following three questions: Did you know the true objective of the study? Have other students talked to you about this study? Were you aware of any deception? None of the participants expressed suspicion regarding the true objectives of the experiment. Participants were thanked for their participation and fully debriefed. All the administered questionnaires were translated into Arabic. All the analyses were carried out using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 26.0 [35]. Table 1A and B shows the correlation coefficient among the five personality factors and their facets, trait anger and aggressive behavior for nonanger and anger groups. As can be seen in Table 1A and B, the majority of aggressiveness facets were positively correlated with trait anger for nonanger and anger groups. Whereas, the majority of neuroticism facets were positively correlated with trait anger for nonanger group ( Table  1B). None of the facets of personality traits neither the trait anger were significantly correlated with aggressive behavior for nonanger and anger groups. All other correlations are presented in Table 1A and B.

Between-Group Analysis
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare aggressive behavior in the anger and nonanger groups. As seen in Fig. (1     To test whether personality traits and trait anger interact with the induction content in regard to eliciting aggressive behavior, separate one-way ANCOVAs were performed with each group (anger vs nonanger) as the independent factor and one of the personality traits and the anger trait as the covariates.
The results showed that the tests for equality of the regression slopes for the two levels of the group variable were not significant for each of the six one-way ANOVAs ( Table 2). Thus, the effect of the group on aggressive behavior is not moderated by personality traits and anger traits.

DISCUSSION
This investigation explored whether situational influence, in which subjects are made to feel angry, is more likely to influence aggressive behavior than personality traits. Compared with previous studies that have been conducted, our investigation indeed supports the notion that situational prompts, such as being provoked by others can lead to aggressive behavior [36]. This investigation found that participants who have been negatively criticized for their taste in fashion do, in fact, become more aggressive in the form of scoring higher on the hot sauce paradigm. These findings are in line with other studies that have found interpersonal insults to be a key driving factor leading to aggression [11].
The present study shows no significant correlation between aggression and any facets of personality traits, whereas other studies have shown connections with neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and impulsiveness [6,7]. However, our study is the first to assess the correlation between the facets of the ZKA-PQ and aggressive behavior.
The data from this research yield several practical implications. Firstly, our results show that an individual's behavior is affected by one's emotional state. Therefore, clinical psychologists should consider the individual emotional state when developing psychological assessments. Additionally, our research suggests that anger induces aggressive behavior. Consequently, experimental psychologists should consider this negative emotion as it could affect participants' responses when conducting experimental research.  . (1). Difference between anger and nonanger groups in aggressive behavior.

Non-Anger Group Anger Group
Aggressive Behavior

Condition
The present study, like all studies, has limitations. Firstly, the limited sample size (N = 48) and the use of only women participants impede the generalizability of the current findings. Secondly, we did not include a measure of state anger to conclude that aggressive behavior is due to state anger and not the other mechanisms. In the present study, we used an interpersonal insult as the negative social feedback due to the proven effectiveness of this technique shown by previous studies in inducing anger emotion [29]. Research has shown that insulted participants significantly differ from noninsulted participants only in anger emotion but not in fear or positive affect. The state-induced anger by this interpersonal insult is associated with a relative left-prefrontal activity. This activity is, in turn, related to aggressive behavior [37].
Furthermore, no measure of the participants' emotional states was taken before or after the experiment to determine how the subjects were feeling. Therefore, the findings do not account for whether the participants may have already been experiencing stress or anxiety. In addition, from a biological perspective, it is well known that high levels of estradiol and progesterone hormones reduce aggression in women [38]. It would be interesting to verify the moderating role of these hormones on the level of aggression expressed by our participants.
The present research has taken into consideration both situational and personality factors and supports the argument that situational factors are a greater predictor of aggressive behavior. Due to its harmful consequences, the continuity of research on the determinants of aggression is vitally important, as intervention and prevention program activities for reducing aggression focus primarily on training individuals to interpret provocation stimuli nonaggressively and on the regulation of anger in response to that provocation.

CONCLUSION
The present research shows that the situation is more influential than a person's personality in predicting aggressive behavior. The participants' anger state, triggered by an interpersonal insult, played a more important role than that of their personality traits and trait anger in producing aggressive behavior. The angry participants allocated more hot sauce to a targeted person who criticized their opinion. However, this allocation was not related to the participants' personality traits or trait anger. As an emotion with interacting physiological and cognitive mechanisms [39], further research is needed to assess the potential mediators of the anger-aggression link.

ETHICS APPROVAL AND CONSENT TO PARTI-CIPATE
This study has been approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Qatar University, Doha, Qatar under ethical approval no. (QU-IRB 1361-EA/20).

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
No Animals were used in this research. All human research procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the committee responsible for human experimentation (institutional and national), and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013.

CONSENT FOR PUBLICATION
Informed consent was obtained from all the patients when they were enrolled.

AVAILABILITY OF DATA AND MATERIALS
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (Y.H) upon reasonable request.