Manali Roy
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 0
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The present study investigated the association between aggression imagery-related self-report measures--the Activities Questionnaire (AQ) and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) via smartphone--and Rorschach aggression-related variables Aggressive Content (AGC), Aggressive Movement (AGM), Aggressive Past (AGP). The Rorschach data were obtained using a group administration that employed instructions from the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer et al., 2011). AGC and AGM are R-PAS variables; AGP is not but was originally tested for use in R-PAS and, therefore, has R-PAS coding criteria that were used in the present study. The study investigated the degree to which Rorschach aggression-related variables assess the presence of aggressive imagery on patients' minds by investigating the degree to which participants with elevated Rorschach aggression scores self-report aggressive imagery in their day-to-day lives. Among the 106 participants, the base rate of reporting the presence of aggressive imagery across instruments was low, especially imagery seen in one's daily environment using EMA. Over seven days of EMA responding, only 16% and 9.4% participants, respectively, reported looking at any type of aggressive movement imagery that was occurring in the present or had occurred in the past. Although using EMA and developing AQ for the study was innovative, the validity for the criterion variables could not be established. The EMA and AQ self-report measures of aggression were not significantly correlated with the hypothesized Rorschach aggression variables, but they were also not significantly or meaningfully correlated with each other (r = .06). The lack of association between the AQ and EMA was particularly surprising given the AQ asks respondents what type of imagery they prefer to look at in their everyday life, and the EMA asks the same respondents to report what type of imagery they are looking at or have on their mind in the moment in their everyday life. Potentially due to the lack of validity for the criterion variables, we did not find a meaningful association between the Rorschach aggression-related variables, AGC(r = .01), AGM (r = .01), and AGP (r = .03), and their composite, Rorschach Total (r = .03) with the composite (EMAQ) of the criterion variables, AQ and EMA. We also did not find significant associations between the Rorschach variables and their composite with the criterion variables AQ and EMA separately, except a moderate positive and significant correlation between the aggressive movement score of EMA (EMA-AM) and AGP (r = .22, p = .025). Clearly, however, Type 1 error cannot be ruled out given the multiple analyses. We have indicated potential ways to refine the use of AQ and EMA to improve their efficacy. Overall, we suggest use of behavioral criterion measures as Rorschach criterion variables for future studies.