Physically aggressive individuals are more likely to decide that others are threatening. Yet no research has examined how physically aggressive individuals’ social decisions unfold in real time. Seventy-five incarcerated men completed a task in which they identified the emotions in faces displaying anger (i.e., threat) and happiness (i.e., nonthreat) at low, moderate, or high ambiguity. Participants then rated their confidence in their decisions either immediately or after a delay, and changes in confidence provided an index of postdecisional processing. Physical aggression was associated with stronger differentiation of threatening and nonthreatening faces under moderate ambiguity. Moreover, physical aggression was associated with steeper decreases in confidence over time following decisions that threatening faces were nonthreatening, indicating more extensive postdecisional processing. This pattern of postdecisional processing mediated the association between physical aggression and angry rumination. Findings suggest a role for postdecisional processing in the maintenance of threat-based social decisions in physical aggression.

身体有侵略性的人更有可能断定其他人正在威胁。然而，尚无研究检查具有攻击性的个人的社会决策如何实时展现。七十五名被监禁的人完成了一项任务，其中他们识别出在低，中度或高度歧义下表现出愤怒（即威胁）和幸福（即无威胁）的脸上的情绪。然后，参与者立即或在延迟后对他们对决策的信心进行评估，信心的变化提供了决策后处理的指标。在中度歧义下，身体攻击与威胁性和非威胁性面孔的更强区分有关。此外，在做出威胁性面孔不受威胁的决定后，随着时间的推移，身体上的攻击与信心的急剧下降相关，表明更广泛的决策后处理。决策后处理的这种模式介导了身体攻击和愤怒反刍之间的联系。研究结果表明，决策后处理在维持身体侵略中基于威胁的社会决策中的作用。