By Helen Pitt
Aggressive and confrontational people who become perpetrators of violence can be easily identified by a "red triad" of personality traits, a Texan researcher told a conference on reducing aggression on Saturday.
William Ickes, a personality and social psychologist from the University of Texas, Arlington, told the 22nd world meeting of the International Society for Research on Aggression at the University of NSW, there are three traits that reliably predict extremely rude and confrontational people.
Bad Santa: William Ickes started studying aggression after he received Talk to the Hand as a Christmas present.
"They are amoral and don't adhere to conventional morality, thin-skinned so don't take criticism well and hot-headed so they quickly get angry and aggressive," he said.
These are personality traits likely to have been present in Ickes' hometown of Dallas earlier this month, when Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and fired upon a group of police officers killing five officers and injuring nine others – the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Violating norms: Amy Adams' character in The Fighter is an archetypal aggressive female.
"Aggressive people are prepared to escalate confrontational situations by doggedly standing their ground which can easily spill into violence," he said. "People who display the red triad character traits are more likely to be described as domestic terrorists who tend to get pissed off very easily and violate the norms of polite society because they think those rules don't apply to them. Religious terrorists tend to differ in that they have an ideology they adhere to."
Ickes has been studying aggression with his research team since 2011, asking a host of questions about how quickly people become confrontational. The research he presented in Sydney on Saturday was the result of tests involving more than 900 people whom he tested on a rudeness scale. He first became interested in studying aggression when he received British writer Lynne Truss' book Talk to the Hand as a Christmas present.
"She pointed out there were a lot of people having little or no respect for conventional morality who refused to be corrected or criticised in any way."
Ickes said aggression is played out daily on video games and movie screens with film characters like the lead roles in all the Mad Max movies, Sacha Baron Cohen's character Borat, and Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa character. He also pointed out aggression is not a male-only domain, with Amy Adams' character in the movie The Fighter being an example of an archetypical aggressive female.
Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat.
Psychologists from around the world gathered for the five-day conference presenting papers as diverse as sexual violence, aggression in schools, road rage, alcohol-related aggression, aggression across the lifespan, anger and its positive emotions, the impact on exposure to war and how violent video games impact behaviour.
Conference organiser Tom Denson, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of NSW, whose own research has lead him to believe you can predict within three minutes if a couple is likely to divorce, says if there is contempt in any relationship it is doomed and may lead to aggressive behaviour.
Tom Hardy in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Test your aggression scale
You are watching a movie with a friend in a crowded movie theatre. You make a funny comment to the friend about what just happened on screen and a woman who is sitting behind you says, "Be quiet during the film". Which would be your most likely response:
William Ickes says aggression is played out daily on video games and movie screens.
1. I would apologise to her and stop taking during the movie.
2. I would ignore her and keep talking out loud to my friend.
3. I would whisper to my friend what a bitch she was.
4. I would turn to her and say "why don't you shut the F... up."