认知控制与主动性攻击的关系：道德认同的调节作用

Proactive aggression is one of the common anti-social behaviours in the life which brings a lot of negative impacts and consequences in peoples lives. Although cognitive control has been identified as an important influence on aggressive and antisocial behaviour, the association between cognitive control and proactive aggression remains controversial. We speculate that this may be due to the presence of moral identity as a moderator. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate whether moral identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between cognitive control and proactive aggression. Study 1 recruited 106 college students and divided them into the moral identity initiation and control groups by experimental manipulation, using linear regression analyses to investigate whether moral identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between cognitive control and proactive aggression. Based on the results of Study 1, Study 2 used a between-subjects design of 2 (tDCS stimulation: active /sham) 2 (manipulation group: moral identity initiation/control), recruiting 98 undergraduate students and assigning them randomly to the active stimulation and sham stimulation groups. Study 2 used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to apply stimulation to brain regions of cognitive control (left dlPFC) and employed a two-way ANOVA to further investigate the impact of enhanced cognitive control on proactive aggression behavior at different levels of moral identity. The results of Study 1 indicated that moral identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between cognitive control and proactive aggression; specifically, in the moral identity activated group, cognitive control was significantly negatively correlated with proactive aggression; in the moral identity controlled group, there was no correlation between cognitive control and proactive aggression. Study 2 validated the findings of Study 1 once again and found that the effect of enhanced cognitive control on proactive aggression behaviours differed across levels of moral identity. In the moral identity-initiated group, individuals proactive aggression decreased with enhanced cognitive control; in the moral identity-controlled group, individuals proactive aggression was irrelevant to cognitive control. Conclusion: Moral identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between cognitive control and proactive aggression. Specifically, cognitive control is significantly and negatively related to proactive aggression at high levels of moral identity, and the individuals proactive aggression decreases as cognitive control increases. While in the moral identity control group, there was no correlation between cognitive control and proactive aggression.