Justification Mechanisms (Jms)

1. Introduction
Traditionally, psychologists measure aggression using self-report scales, which are designed to directly measure the explicit type of aggressive behaviors. Recently James and his colleagues (James et al., 2005; James & LeBreton, 2010, 2012) introduced a new approach to assess individual implied personality, called the Conditional Reasoning (CR). Building on the notions that people prefer to view their behavior as rational and appropriate, and aggressive people are seldom aware of the full extent to which they possess a motive to harm others (Westen, 1998); James and his colleagues introduced the concept of Justification Mechanisms (JMs). JMs are implicit biases that an aggressive individual may use to help him/her to resolve the conflict between the motive to aggress and the motive to hold a favorable view of self. CR and JMs are considered as the foundation of this approach for measuring personality. According to James and

People with high self-reported aggression and high strength of JMs see themselves as aggressive, so they tend to channel their aggressiveness into overt hostilities. Individuals with high self-reported aggression and low strength of JMs see themselves as aggressive; however, they lack JMs that would prepare them to rationalize engaging in aggression. They still channel their aggression, but into socially accepted expressions that do not need to be defended. The last type of individuals in this typology is people who self-reported low aggression with low strength of JMs. They see themselves as nonaggressive, and they also tend to think in a way that promotes nonaggressiveness; therefore they are typically prosocial and thus not engage in aggressive behavior (see James & LeBreton,