The Study Of Hostile Attribution’s Experimental Manipulation And Brain Mechanism From The Expectation-provocation Perspective

Hostile attribution refers to interpreting others’behavioral intentions as hostile or threatening,which not only leads to various forms of aggression,but is also associated with psychological problems such as depression and anxiety.Studying hostile attribution not only helps us to reveal the mechanism of its occurrence and development and understand the process of human intention interpretation,but also helps to reduce aggression and other negative consequences.The brain is the material basis of human cognitive activity,so a comprehensive study of hostile attribution must be related to brain.The revelation of the brain association of hostile attribution is helpful to the development and formulation of brain intervening measures for hostile attribution,and provides a new direction for reducing hostile attribution and its negative consequences.However,there are few studies on the brain association of hostile attribution,and the results are inconsistent.The brain association of hostile attribution is still not clear.Therefore,the present study aims to develop an experimental manipulation task of hostile attribution—expectation-provocation task,test its effectiveness,and use this task to explore the brain association of hostile attribution.Specifically,this paper intends to explore the following two issues through two studies:（1）whether the expectation-provocation task can manipulate levels of hostile attribution;（2）What brain regions are activated when individuals make hostile attribution.The expectation-provocation task,set in a draw cards-shock game,manipulates hostile attribution by creating high-and low-provocative situations by giving individuals shocks higher or lower than their expected shock level.In study 1,the single-factor between-subject design was adopted.The independent variable was the relationship between the actual shock level endured by the subjects and the expected shock level,which was divided into two conditions:the actual shock level was no lower than the expected shock level（hereinafter referred to as“no lower than the expected shock”）and the actual shock level was no higher than the expected shock level（hereinafter referred to as“no higher than the expected shock”）.A total of 86 subjects(M_age=19.90,SDage=1.57)were recruited,43 in each group,including 22 women and21 men.Hostile attribution was used as the dependent variable to conduct independent sample t test.The results showed that subjects’level of hostile attribution in the group of no lower than the expected shock was significantly higher than that in the group of no higher than the expected shock.Using anger emotion and hostile emotion as dependent variables,repeated measurement variance analysis found the main effect of the experimental condition was significant,that is,subjects’levels of anger emotion and hostile emotion in the no lower than the expected shock group were significantly stronger than those in the no higher than the expected shock group.The main effect of the measurement time was significant,this is,subjects’levels of anger emotion and hostile emotion were significantly stronger after the experiment than before.The interaction between the experimental condition and the measurement time was significant.Further simple effect analysis showed that no significant difference in anger emotion and hostile emotion between the no lower than the expected shock group and no higher than the expected shock group before the experiment.After the experiment,the levels of anger emotion and hostile emotion in the group of no lower than the expected shock was significantly higher than that in the group of no higher than the expected shock.The independent sample t test with aggressive behavior as the dependent variable showed that the level of aggressive behavior of no lower than the expected shock group was significantly higher than that of no higher than the expected shock group.These founds suggest that the expectation-provocation task can manipulate the levels of hostile attribution.The expectation-provocation task was adjusted on the basis of the study 1 and the operational requirements of the functional magnetic resonance imaging（fMRI）experiment.To ensure the effectiveness of the fMRI experiment,the preliminary experiment was conducted first to check the validity of the adjusted task.The preliminary experiment in study 2 adopted a single-factor two-level within-subject design.A total of 12 subjects were recruited(6 women,6 men,M_age=19.44,SD_age=1.35).The paired sample t test with hostile attribution and aggressive behavior as dependent variables found that the levels of hostile attribution and aggressive behavior of subjects under the condition of no lower than the expected shock were significantly higher than those under the condition of no higher than the expected shock.Repeated measurement variance analysis with anger emotion and hostile emotion as dependent variables obtained results similar to those in study 1.These results suggest that the adjusted expectation-provocation task can manipulate hostile attribution,and it can be used for fMRI experiments.The formal experiment in Study 2 consisted of 27 valid subjects(18 women,9 men,M_age=21.78,SD_age=2.08).The results of behavioral experiment showed that the levels of hostile attribution and aggressive behavior of subjects under the condition of no lower than the expected shock were significantly higher than those under the condition of no higher than the expected shock.Before the experiment,there was no difference in subjects’anger emotion and hostile emotion between the two conditions.After the experiment,the subjects’anger emotion and hostile emotion under the condition of no lower than the expected shock were significantly stronger than that under the condition of no higher than the expected shock.The fMRI experiment showed that the activated brain regions under the condition of high hostile attribution level-low hostile attribution level were right middle frontal gyrus,right inferior frontal gyrus,left middle temporal gyrus,left precuneus,right mid-cingulate cortex,right insula,right thalamus,left and right superior parietal gyrus,right middle occipital gyrus,left cuneus,left caudate,left precental gyrus,left postcentral gyrus,and right cerebellum.Combining the two studies leads to the following conclusions:（1）The expectation-provocation task can manipulate different level of hostile attribution;（2）The important brain regions activated by hostile attribution include middle frontal gyrus,inferior frontal gyrus,middle temporal gyrus,mid-cingulate cortex,insula,precuneus,thalamus,and superior parietal gyrus.The activations of these brain regions are closely related to perception and processing of threat information,intent attribution,and hostile emotion.