378 Iv. COGNITI vE AND M OTIvATIONAL P ROCESSES
occur when people recruit regions of the 
frontal lobes to down-  regulate problematic 
thoughts or behaviors (Kerns et al., 2004). 
Therefore, if people seek to control their hos -
tile thoughts, one might see reduced flanker 
costs immediately following hostile primes. 
Just such a pattern was evident at low levels 
of trait anger. At high levels of trait anger, by 
contrast, there was no reduction in flanker 
costs following hostile primes. These find -
ings indicate that people low in trait anger, 
but not high, spontaneously recruit cognitive 
control resources in the context of their hos -
tile thoughts. Such habits are likely to play a 
significant role in anger control (Wilkowski 
& Robinson, 2010).
Indeed, Wilkowski, Robinson, and Troop- 
Gordon (2010) were able to link such pro -
cessing tendencies to anger control. In Study 
1, people who exhibited reduced flanker 
costs following hostile primes were less 
revenge-  motivated in a laboratory aggres -
sion task, and they were less aggressive. In 
Study 2, individual differences in this model 
of anger control predicted several daily 
outcomes suggestive of forgiveness. People 
with reduced flanker costs following hostile 
primes were more forgiving of provocations 
in daily life. Additionally, these people were 
capable of effective forgiveness in that, for 
them, forgiveness on one day predicted re -
duced anger on the next. By contrast, people 
who did not recruit cognitive control fol -
lowing hostile primes were less forgiving of 
provocations, and their states of forgiveness 
were less effective in down-  regulating anger. 
These findings, perhaps more than those of 
Wilkowski and Robinson (2008b), reveal 
how a cognitive model of anger control can 
be used to make substantive predictions con -
cerning real-world forms of provocation and 
reaction.
Flanker effects are malleable in that they 
rise or fall with the preceding context (Kerns 
et al., 2004). It is perhaps for this reason 
that trait anger does not appear to predict 
the magnitude of the flanker effect, indepen -
dent of hostile primes (Wilkowski & Rob -
inson, 2008b). Yet there are other forms of 
control (e.g., motor control) that appear to 
be more dispositional in nature. Recall that 
Bresin et al. (2012) found that agreeable 
people exhibited better motor control while 
rehearsing hostile words. In addition, they also found that agreeable people exhibited 
superior motor control, independent of hos -
tile primes; that is, there was a main effect 
for agreeableness in this analysis. Bresin and 
Robinson (2013) sought to extend this main 
effect perspective to trait anger and its con -
trol. In two studies, the trait of anger con -
trol was linked to better motor control. In 
another two studies, the trait of anger was 
linked to worse motor control. These ef -
fects were not altered by emotional context 
manipulations such as affective sounds. Ac -
cordingly, angry people seem less capable of 
controlling their behavior in micromomen -
tary terms, and motor control tasks may be 
useful as basic probes of self-  control.
Cognition as Implicit Personality
When we ask people about their personal -
ity traits, we are assessing explicit compo -
nents of personality. When we ask people to 
perform a task, we are potentially assessing 
implicit components of personality. These 
two sorts of assessments may not necessar -
ily agree with each other, or they may reveal 
different things about people. For example, 
Meier and Robinson (2004) thought that 
agreeable people would have difficulty as -
signing hostile meaning in a categorization 
task, but they failed to observe a relation -
ship of this type. Regardless, people with 
more accessible hostile thoughts were an -
grier and more aggressive in daily life (see 
Figure 17.2), particularly if they were low 
in agreeableness. Hostile thought accessibil -
ity can therefore be regarded as an implicit 
measure of personality: It predicts outcomes 
of interest to personality psychologists (e.g., 
daily anger) but does not correlate with self- 
reports of personality.
Or consider implicit motives such as the 
need for power (McClelland, 1987; Schult -
heiss & Kollner, this volume). These mo -
tives can be assessed using a standardized 
test (which involves writing stories in re -
sponse to pictures). There are pronounced 
individual differences that emerge from 
the test and these predict both long-term 
(e.g., marital success) and short-term (e.g., 
argumentativeness) outcomes of interest to 
social-  personality psychologists (Schult  heiss 
& Köllner, Chapter 18, this volume). None -