Gender differences in sensitivity to provocation and hostile attribution bias toward ambiguous facial cues in violent offenders and community-based adults

Aggressive offenders commonly show hostile attribution bias in the perception of facial affect. Individuals’ sensitivity to provocation has been also linked to hostile attribution. However, most studies have been limited to male offenders. The current study investigated whether sensitivity to provocation (SP) predicted bias towards interpretation of ambiguous facial cues as angry (hostility bias) in violent inmates compared to community-dwelling non-inmates. The sample (N = 272) consisted of 105 (53 women) violent inmates and 167 (85 women) adults living in the community. Hostility bias towards targets’ faces was differently related to sensitivity to provocation across genders and groups depending on the target’s sex. Generally, the higher inmates’ sensitivity to provocation in men, the higher the identification of anger on female target faces, but the lower on male faces (anger/fear morphs). Conversely, the higher inmates’ sensitivity to provocation in women, the lower the identification of anger on female target faces (anger/fear morphs). Additionally, we observed that in non-inmates, men’s sensitivity to provocation significantly predicted anger identification on male faces. In the case of anger/happy face morphs, the more sensitive to provocation women in our samples were, the less they perceived anger in ambiguous faces. Conversely, men who were sensitive to provocation tended to perceive anger more often. With the current project, we show the importance of studying gender differences, which are often neglected, in the study of hostile interpretations of ambiguous stimuli amongst inmates and community samples. We anticipate that the results may help to design distinct and adequate resocialization and psychotherapeutic programs for both women and men with a tendency to violence.