Abstract
Violence is a serious public health concern with devastating
physical, mental, social, and economic repercussions. In order to
develop appropriate preventive and interventional strategies, risk
factors associated with violence and aggression must be identified.
Many of the previously studied predictors of aggression are
subjective and often difficult to quantify, making
risk-stratification difficult and necessitating the need to
establish objective indices. The goal of this thesis is to identify
whether the following physiological correlates of autonomic nervous
system (ANS) activity - fear-potentiated startle response,
respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in response to a negative
stimulus (i.e. delivery of loud acoustic startle probes), and
resting heart rate (HR)- are predictive of aggression in both men
and women. Physiological data were collected between May 2008 and
January 2011 from a population of 309 highly traumatized, at-risk,
primarily African American civilians seeking primary care at Grady
Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA. After excluding all individuals
with missing self-reported aggression data, 251 remained. In men,
fear-potentiated startle response to a cue that was previously
paired with an airblast (danger cue, CS+) and startle RSA were
positively associated with aggression (R=0.26, R2=0.07, p<0.05
and R=0.32, R2=0.10, p<0.05, respectively) and resting HR was
negatively associated with aggression (R= -0.26, R2=0.07, p=0.042).
In women, only resting HR was significantly negatively associated
with aggression (R= -0.24 R2=0.06, p<0.01). This study
demonstrates that among men aggression is associated with
dysregulation of ANS activity both at rest and in response to
stressors, while among women aggression may only be associated with
components of the ANS involved in resting HR. The associations
between each of these physiological predictors and aggression in
addition to the sex differences between each of these associations
may provide further insight into the etiology of aggression. Such
findings may eventually help in the development of measures
targeted at identification of individuals prone to aggression and
violence.
Table of Contents
BACKGROUND page 1
METHODS page 7
RESULTS page 15
DISSCUSION page 24
FUTURE DIRECTIONS page 38
REFERENCES page 40
TABLES AND FIGURES page 50
APPENDICES page 65
About this Master's Thesis
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