Aggressive Motivation

Aggressive motivation was assessed by the Aggressive Motives Scale (Anderson and Murphy, 2003). The original scale consisted of six items, two of which are used to measure instrumental aggression motivation and four of which are used to measure revenge aggression motivation. Given that aggression was provoked by others in the present study, the two items used to measure instrumental aggression motivation were excluded from the scale. Sample items of revenge motivation include “I wanted to make my partner mad.” The ratings for each item ranged from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a lot). Cronbach’s alpha values for the two measurements were 0.83 and 0.89.