It is Written in Your Eyes: Hostile Attributions and Self-Directed Gaze Perception in Incarcerated Violent Adolescent Male Offenders

• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X17746292
• Author: Klaus-Peter Dahle,Zhana M. Karadenizova
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X17746292

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2018, Vol. 62(12) 3623 –3638

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X17746292

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Article

It is Written in Your Eyes:

Hostile Attributions and Self-

Directed Gaze Perception

in Incarcerated Violent

Adolescent Male Offenders

Zhana M. Karadenizova1,2 and

Klaus-Peter Dahle1,2

Abstract

To date, we have frugal knowledge about the hostile attribution bias (HAB) and

the biased gaze perception in violent adolescent offenders. This however is a major

contributing factor in understanding delinquent behavior. Using a computer-based

approach, presenting faces modulated in gaze direction (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, 8°) and valence

(angry, fearful, happy, neutral), the present study examined the impact of HAB of the

feeling of being stared at in a sample of 27 adolescent offenders (aged 17-24 years).

The study was conducted institution-intern in the Department for Social Therapy of

a German correctional facility. Results showed that in comparison with faces with

negative expressions, happy faces were more likely to be perceived as self-directed.

Interestingly, emotion showed significant influence of the gaze perception in only

two viewing angles (2° and 6°), revealing the role of the facial expression in highly

ambiguous conditions. Furthermore, hostility did not modulate the relationship

between the self-referential gaze perception and (negative) facial expression. Possible

frameworks and limitations of the study are discussed.

Keywords

aggressive behavior, hostile attribution bias, emotion, self-directed gaze perception,

juvenile delinquency

1Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

2Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Zhana M. Karadenizova, Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin,

Oranienburger Straße 285 (Haus 10), 13437 Berlin, Germany.

Email: karadenizova@zedat.fu-berlin.de

746292IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X17746292International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyKaradenizova and Dahle

research-article2017

3624 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 62(12)

The phenomenon of juvenile delinquency and violent behavior has received an enor-

mous amount of scientific attention in the recent times. Discovering the factors associ-

ated with the manifestation and maintenance of aggressive behavior is an important

step in understanding youth crime. Deficient social information processing may at

least partly explain socially inappropriate behavioral reactions in aggression-prone

individuals. The hostile attribution bias (HAB; e.g., Nasby, Hayden, & DePaulo, 1980)

is a fundamental cognitive process found to reinforce aggressive behavior. The HAB

refers to the individual’s tendency to perceive other people’s provocative, yet ambigu-

ous, actions as hostile and to overattribute malicious intent to other people’s behavior

(e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge, 1980; Dodge & Coie, 1987; Dodge & Newman,

1981; Dodge, Price, Newman, & Bacharowski, 1990; Orbio de Castro, Veerman,

Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002; Van Oostrum & Horvath, 1997).

HAB is usually assessed with vignettes describing (if written) or showing (if video-

taped) different social situations, for example, being hit by a ball in the back. The

protagonist in the vignettes acts in an unclear or ambiguous way which has a negative

outcome for the subject of the story, in this case for the participants in the study. When

asked to attribute intent to other’s behavior, aggressive subjects were signif‌icantly

more likely to interpret the peer’s intention as hostile, whereas nonaggressive controls

tended to attribute a benign intent (for overview, see Orbio de Castro et al., 2002). In

addition, antisocial-aggressive individuals were most likely to solve social problems

in the vignettes by defining problems in hostile ways, adopting hostile goals, seeking

few additional facts, generating few alternative solutions, anticipating few conse-

quences for aggression, and choosing few “best” and “second best” solutions that were

rated as “effective” (Slaby & Guerra, 1988).

During social interactions, facial expressions represent one of the most important

information sources in the ongoing stream of various social cues. When involved in a

social interaction, individuals have to deal with facial expressions with diverse emo-

tional valences and then use these subtle cues to evaluate other people’s intentions or

current emotional state. An efficient processing of such social information provides

the base for successful social interactions and suitable social behavior. However, due

to its complex and dynamic nature, facial affect has a high potential for ambiguity and

tends to support the biases of the beholder. Schönenberg and Jusyte (2014) suggested

that the impaired ability to decode important social signals such as facial expressions

might be a probable reason for individuals to interpret another’s behavior inaccurately

and to attribute hostile intention. In fact, aggressive behavior was shown to be linked

to def‌icits in the perception of unambiguous facial affect (Marsh & Blair, 2008).

However, the possible connection between HAB and the processing of facial expres-

sion has been only partially investigated. Initial studies with normative adolescent and

adult populations showed that the aggression trait is moderately associated with hos-

tile perception of others (Burt, Mikolajewski, & Larson, 2009) and that subjects with

high scores in hostility perceived happy and neutral faces as less friendly (Knyazev,

Bocharov, & Slobodskoj-Plusnin, 2009). Furthermore, an investigation into a sample

of institutionalized boys suggested that a generalized attributional bias to infer hostil-

ity (negative-dominant affect) from various classes of unambiguous social stimuli

becomes more pronounced as aggressiveness increases (Nasby et al., 1980).