 17. Cognitive Approaches to Personality  375
but by provocation for another (Lawrence, 
2006). There is a major limitation to this 
social-  cognitive view, however: Traits exist; 
that is, some people are more prone to ag -
gression than others across a variety of cir -
cumstances (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). 
It may therefore be useful to combine trait 
and social-  cognitive views in order to make 
more precise predictions.
Moeller, Robinson, and Bresin (2010) 
attempted such an integration. Social- 
cognitive associations (Mischel & Shoda, 
1995) were modeled in terms of RT priming 
effects. Along these lines, Study 1 assessed 
the extent to which stress-  related primes 
(words like frustration  or problems ) activat -
ed thoughts of an aggressive nature. There 
was no normative effect of this type, indi -
cating that people differ quite a bit in their 
stress–  aggression associations. Of more im -
portance, we then showed that neuroticism 
and such stress–  aggression associations in -
teracted to predict (self-  reported) physical 
aggression. Physical aggression was particu -
larly pronounced among people who were 
prone to stress due to their high neuroticism 
levels, and who also had strong implicit as -
sociations of a stress–  aggression type. The 
relevant pattern, displayed in Figure 17.1, 
suggests that priming tasks can be used to 
predict the particular realms in which high 
levels of neuroticism are likely to manifest 
themselves.Agreeableness and  the Self-Regulation 
of Hostile Thoughts
It is generally accepted that hostile thoughts 
play a major role in anger and aggression 
(Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 
1993). This framework is particularly apt in 
thinking about the situational causes of these 
outcomes. Thus, we get angry at people when 
we have hostile thoughts (Berkowitz, 1993) 
and we act aggressively to the extent that the 
situation activates hostile thoughts (Ander -
son & Bushman, 2002). An important way 
of thinking about these influences is in terms 
of information accessibility (Higgins, 1996): 
We are far more likely to feel anger and to 
behave aggressively when hostile thoughts 
are accessible (activated, ready to use) than 
not (Anderson & Bushman, 2002).
Potentially independent of situational fac -
tors, personality factors are also important 
predictors of anger and aggression. In par -
ticular, the trait of agreeableness is a fairly 
strong inverse predictor of both of these oc -
currences (Egan, 2009). The specificity of 
these relationships is somewhat impressive, 
in that agreeableness is generally much less 
related to other forms of negative emotion 
(Watson, 2000) or impulsive behavior (Mc -
Crae & John, 1992); that is, agreeableness 
levels seem key to predicting whether people 
will become angry and aggressive (Wilkow -
ski & Robinson, 2008a).
11.522.53
Low Neuroticism High NeuroticismPhysical Aggression LevelsWeak Associations Strong Associations
FIGURE 17.1.  Physical aggression as a function of neuroticism levels and stress–  aggression associations. 
Based on Moeller, Robinson, and Bresin (2010).