Capturing the Hostile Attribution Bias Through Conditional Reasoning Tasks: The Hostile Reasoning Test as an Indirect Measure of Aggressiveness

ABSTRACT

The hostile attribution bias is considered a central component of aggressiveness. It is thought to be a rather impulsive mechanism which justifies (reactive) aggressive behaviour as logical and reasonable. Therefore, reasoning tasks may provide an unobtrusive means to make the hostile attribution bias accessible to measurement. In this manuscript, we developed such a task, the Hostile Reasoning Test (HRT), and assessed its psychometric properties. In three studies, we found that the HRT is reliable, shows convergent and discriminant validity for a male (Study 1, N = 206) and female (Study 3, N = 207) sample, and demonstrates incremental validity beyond self‐reported aggressiveness in predicting reactive aggressive behaviour (Study 2, N = 78). The present results indicate that reasoning tasks such as the HRT are a promising complement to self‐report measures, in particular if the more reactive and impulsive aspects of aggressiveness are of interest.