The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI)<\/strong> is a foundational, multidimensional psychological assessment instrument developed by Arnold H. Buss<\/a> and Ann Durkee in 1957 to measure various manifest and latent components of hostility and aggression. Spanning 75 self-report items administered via a dichotomous True\/False<\/em> response format, the inventory was constructed to overcome the unifactorial conceptualizations of aggression that dominated early twentieth-century psychometrics. The BDHI delineates hostility into eight specialized subscales reflecting behavioral, emotional, and cognitive manifestations: Assault<\/em> (10 items), Indirect Hostility<\/em> (9 items), Irritability<\/em> (11 items), Negativism<\/em> (5 items), Resentment<\/em> (8 items), Suspicion<\/em> (10 items), Verbal Hostility<\/em> (13 items), and an independent evaluative subscale, Guilt<\/em> (9 items). Psychometric investigations demonstrate robust internal consistency across subscales (Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 coefficients typically ranging between .60 and .84), satisfactory test-retest reliability across multiple temporal intervals, and convergent validity with observational ratings, laboratory provocation paradigms, and collateral personality inventories including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI<\/a>). Structural and exploratory factor analytic investigations historically revealed two dominant higher-order dimensions: an Overt\/Expressive Hostility<\/em> (motor\/behavioral) factor and a Covert\/Neurotic Hostility<\/em> (cognitive\/attitudinal) factor. Widely utilized across five decades of clinical psychology, forensic criminology, behavioral medicine, and cardiovascular epidemiology, the BDHI established the empirical framework for modern anger-hostility-aggression research and served as the direct conceptual progenitor to the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire<\/a> (BPAQ).<\/p>\n Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory, BDHI, Aggression Assessment, Hostile Attitudes, Motor Aggression, Psychometrics, Factor Structure, Behavioral Medicine, Overt Hostility, Covert Hostility<\/p>\n The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory was co-authored by Arnold H. Buss<\/strong> (Ph.D.) and Ann Durkee<\/strong> (M.A.) in 1957 during their tenure at the Carter Memorial Hospital and Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. <\/p>\n Arnold H. Buss (1924\u20132021) subsequently served as a prominent Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin<\/a>, after academic appointments at the University of Pittsburgh and Rutgers University. Dr. Buss was a pioneer in experimental personality research, behavioral genetics, human aggression, and childhood temperament (co-developing the EAS Temperament Model with Robert Plomin). Ann Durkee contributed extensively to clinical psychometric construction, psychological testing, and psychiatric data collection in hospitalized psychiatric cohorts and normative non-clinical samples throughout the mid-twentieth century.<\/p>\n The primary purpose of the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory is to capture the complex, multidimensional nature of human hostility by explicitly distinguishing between behavioral acts of aggression, affective experiences of irritability, and cognitive or attitudinal orientations of distrust and cynicism. Prior to the construction of the BDHI in 1957, psychological testing routinely conflated subjective emotional anger, external behavioral destruction, and covert resentment into generalized, undifferentiated indices of “aggressiveness.” Buss and Durkee recognized that an individual might harbor intense cognitive resentment or chronic cynicism without ever initiating physical violence; conversely, another individual might display explosive verbal or physical aggression under provocation without enduring persistent persecutory suspiciousness.<\/p>\n The BDHI has served as a cornerstone instrument across several diverse academic disciplines:<\/p>\n Clinically, the BDHI assists psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and clinical neuropsychologists in deconstructing diffuse presenting complaints of “anger management issues.” By administering the 75 items, clinicians obtain a differentiated profile across eight distinct axes:<\/p>\n The BDHI conceptualizes hostility as a multifaceted affective-behavioral-cognitive matrix consisting of eight systematically operationalized subscales. Rather than viewing hostility as a singular drive, Buss and Durkee (1957) postulated that aggression diverges along distinct expressive modalities (physical vs. verbal), structural pathways (direct vs. indirect), and psychological domains (behavioral, affective, attitudinal, and conscience-related).<\/p>\n Comprising 10 items, Assault<\/em> measures physical violence directed against other persons. It assesses both initiation of bodily harm and physical retaliation when provoked. Manifestations include fist fights, slapping, using physical force to defend personal rights, and coming to physical blows during interpersonal disputes (e.g., Item 25: “If somebody hits me first, I let him have it”<\/em>; Item 49: “When I really lose my temper, I am capable of slapping”<\/em>).<\/p>\n Represented by 9 items, Indirect Hostility<\/em> captures covert, roundabout aggression where the aggressive behavior is either not directed toward the target person directly or is mediated through non-confrontational channels. This subscale encompasses both undirected emotional discharges (such as slamming doors, throwing or breaking objects, stomping feet) and covert interpersonal sabotage (such as malicious gossip, spreading damaging rumors, or passive-aggressive spiteful behavior).<\/p>\n Containing 11 items, Irritability<\/em> taps affective volatility and the threshold of emotional provocation. It measures a respondent’s readiness to explode into anger upon encountering minor environmental or interpersonal frustrations. Characteristics include losing one’s temper easily, feeling like a “powder keg ready to explode,” persistent grouchiness, and chronic low frustration tolerance (e.g., Item 4: “I lose my temper easily but get over it quickly”<\/em>; Item 44: “I often feel like a powder keg ready to explode”<\/em>).<\/p>\n Formulated through 5 items, Negativism<\/em> evaluates oppositional behavior directed against authority, structural rules, or interpersonal demands. Rooted in passive or active defiance, negativistic aggression manifests as deliberate non-compliance, violating unwelcome regulations, doing the opposite of what an authoritarian figure demands, or deliberately dragging one’s feet to express resistance (e.g., Item 19: “When someone is bossy, I do the opposite of what he asks”<\/em>).<\/p>\n Spanning 8 items, Resentment<\/em> operationalizes internal cognitive hostility characterized by jealousy, chronic grievance, envy, and the pervasive perception of being mistreated or denied fairness by life or other individuals. Resentment represents a smoldering affective-cognitive state wherein individuals ruminate over perceived injustices, harbor long-standing grudges, and believe that “other people always seem to get the breaks” (Item 13).<\/p>\n Measured via 10 items, Suspicion<\/em> constitutes the projective, cognitive dimension of hostility. It taps interpersonal distrust, paranoia, and the chronic belief that others possess malicious intent, are talking behind one’s back, or are attempting to harm, mock, or exploit the individual (e.g., Item 6: “I know that people tend to talk about me behind my back”<\/em>; Item 54: “I commonly wonder what hidden reason another person may have for doing something nice for me”<\/em>).<\/p>\n Composed of 13 items, Verbal Hostility<\/em> assesses overt negative affect expressed through spoken language. This dimension includes raising one’s voice, shouting, screaming, arguing aggressively, using profanity or nasty remarks, making verbal threats, and engaging in sharp, cutting sarcasm during disagreements (e.g., Item 47: “When people yell at me, I yell back”<\/em>; Item 51: “When I get mad, I say nasty things”<\/em>).<\/p>\n Consisting of 9 items, Guilt<\/em> was designed by Buss and Durkee not as an aggressive behavior per se, but as an index of self-directed negative affect, remorse, and conscience activation following perceived moral failure or harm inflicted upon others. Buss and Durkee included Guilt<\/em> because strong internal remorse acts as a vital psychological brake or regulator of aggressive action. The items examine feelings of shame, conscience punishment, remorse over cheating or failure, and distress regarding moral conduct (e.g., Item 64: “When I do wrong, my conscience punishes me”<\/em>).<\/p>\n The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory was constructed during an era of fundamental conceptual realignments in psychological science, navigating between drive-reduction psychoanalytic frameworks, early behaviorism<\/a>, and emerging social-cognitive paradigms.<\/p>\n In 1939, John Dollard, Leonard Doob, Neal Miller, O. H. Mowrer, and Robert Sears published the celebrated Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis<\/a>, proposing that aggression is always a consequence of frustration, and that frustration invariably leads to some form of aggression. Arnold H. Buss, in his landmark theoretical text The Psychology of Aggression<\/em> (1961), fundamentally reconceptualized this paradigm.<\/p>\n Buss argued that frustration is only an antecedent condition that produces emotional arousal, and that learning, reinforcement history, and instrumental conditioning dictate whether an individual mounts an aggressive response. He decoupled the internal emotional state from the observable behavior, defining aggression strictly as an instrumental response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism. Hostility, in contrast, was defined by Buss as an enduring cognitive attitude involving negative evaluations of people and events, sustained by an underlying emotional substrate of anger.<\/p>\n Buss formalized a tripartite model that served as the theoretical infrastructure of the BDHI:<\/p>\n By mapping these three interrelated yet empirically separable components onto discrete subscales, the BDHI allowed psychometricians to assess whether individuals suffered primarily from emotional instability (elevated Irritability), behavioral behavioral disinhibition (elevated Assault and Verbal Hostility), or cognitive-perceptual paranoia and cynicism (elevated Suspicion and Resentment).<\/p>\n Over six decades of psychometric scrutiny have evaluated the validity of the BDHI across clinical, forensic, normal, and medical populations.<\/p>\n Convergent validity of the BDHI has been extensively verified against external behavioral markers, observational metrics, and established psychometric scales:<\/p>\n Discriminant validity research confirms that the primary hostility subscales (Assault, Verbal Hostility, Indirect Hostility) can be statistically differentiated from generalized anxiety, neurosis, and somatic depression. While Resentment<\/em> and Guilt<\/em> show moderate overlap with dysphoric mood states (correlating .35 to .48 with Beck Depression Inventory indices), the behavioral motor subscales (Assault<\/em>, Verbal Hostility<\/em>) demonstrate low correlations (< .20) with generalized trait anxiety inventories (such as the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale), confirming that the BDHI does not simply reflect diffuse psychological distress.<\/p>\n The predictive validity of the BDHI is notable across forensic and medical contexts:<\/p>\n The psychometric reliability of the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory has been demonstrated across diverse language adaptations, normative clinical cohorts, and experimental investigations.<\/p>\n Because the original BDHI uses a dichotomous (True\/False) scoring format, internal consistency was initially evaluated using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20), followed by Cronbach’s alpha in later modern psychometric evaluations:<\/p>\n Temporal stability assessments reveal that the BDHI measures stable trait-like dispositions rather than transient situational mood fluctuations:<\/p>\n The underlying factor structure of the BDHI has been the subject of extensive empirical debate and exploratory\/confirmatory factor analytic (EFA\/CFA) investigation since its 1957 debut.<\/p>\n In their initial standardization sample of 270 college students, Arnold Buss and Ann Durkee conducted principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation. Their findings indicated that while the 8 subscales possessed face validity and theoretical coherence, they did not represent 8 completely independent latent constructs. Instead, two dominant higher-order factors emerged, accounting for the vast majority of the common variance:<\/p>\n Subsequent psychometricians conducted secondary analyses to refine the BDHI’s latent architecture:<\/p>\n The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory was originally developed in 1957<\/strong> and published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology<\/em> (Buss & Durkee, 1957). The full 75-item inventory was published directly in the academic literature for scientific, educational, and clinical utilization.<\/p>\n As an archival instrument published over six decades ago in a primary academic journal, the BDHI is widely regarded as entering the public domain<\/strong> for empirical scientific investigation and clinical educational use. No commercial licensing fees or royalty payments are required to administer or score the standard 75-item instrument for research purposes. Clinicians and researchers must cite the original 1957 validation manuscript when presenting or publishing empirical findings derived from the inventory. For institutional and high-stakes diagnostic applications, practitioners frequently utilize its modernized successor, the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ), or standardized computer-scored editions distributed by clinical test publishers.<\/p>\n2. Keywords<\/h2>\n
3. Authors<\/h2>\n
4. Purpose and Clinical Utility<\/h2>\n
Research Applications<\/h3>\n
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Clinical Assessment and Treatment Planning<\/h3>\n
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5. Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Assault (Physical Hostility)<\/h3>\n
2. Indirect Hostility<\/h3>\n
3. Irritability<\/h3>\n
4. Negativism<\/h3>\n
5. Resentment<\/h3>\n
6. Suspicion<\/h3>\n
7. Verbal Hostility<\/h3>\n
8. Guilt<\/h3>\n
6. Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis and Buss’s Critique<\/h3>\n
The Tripartite Architecture: Affect, Behavior, and Cognition<\/h3>\n
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7. Validity<\/h2>\n
Construct and Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
Predictive and Ecological Validity<\/h3>\n
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8. Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Test-Retest Stability<\/h3>\n
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9. Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Original Exploratory Factor Analysis (Buss & Durkee, 1957)<\/h3>\n
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Subsequent Replications and Models<\/h3>\n
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10. Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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11. Permissions, Fee, and Test Year<\/h2>\n
12. References<\/h2>\n
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