Frequent aggression and attribution of hostile intent in people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities: an empirical investigation.

We investigated whether aggressive individuals have an attributional bias of hostile intent compared to nonaggressive peers. We compared 43 frequently aggressive individuals who had mild to moderate intellectual disabilities with 46 nonaggressive controls on an attributional task. The aggressive participants attributed significantly more hostile intent to protagonists and indicated that they would respond more aggressively than did the controls to provocative scenes, but only when the threat was to themselves. Results suggest that differences in attribution of threat to self play a role in frequent aggression. These differences appear to be due, in part, to a positive bias of the nonaggressive participants on the self-referent scenes. Clinically, results highlight the importance of assessing and addressing aggressive individuals' interpersonal perceptions.