2 - (SYM 67) Understanding the Experience and Expression of Anger in Hoarding

Hoarding disorder (HD) is a debilitating condition associated with significant interpersonal difficulties, including greater loneliness, isolation, and reduced social support. Recent conceptualizations of hoarding also indicate that interpersonal factors may not only be associated with hoarding but may contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder. Research on the nature of these interpersonal difficulties is still emerging. There is a small body of work to suggest that expressions of anger, such as aggression and hostility, may partially contribute to these social difficulties, although these findings have been limited to self-reported anger and aggression. Further research is required to understand if hoarding is related to other experiences or expressions of anger, including anger reactivity or displaced anger, and if these anger experiences relate to common interpersonal difficulties in hoarding, such as insecure attachment style. As such, the aims of this study were to 1) investigate the relationship between multifaceted aspects of anger with hoarding using subjective and objective measures and to 2) investigate the mediating role of attachment style.

This study included 485 participants recruited through Prolific. Participants completed self-report measures of hoarding symptoms, trait anger, direct aggression, displaced aggression, hostility, and attachment style. Participants also completed two behavioural tasks, including an autobiographical anger recall task and an experimental “voodoo doll” task for a more objective measure of direct and displaced aggression. Hoarding was positively associated with all self-reported anger measures, even after controlling for depression (r’s between .13 - .33, all p’s < .01). Hoarding was also positively associated with greater anger reactivity in the autobiographical recall task (ΔR2= .012, F(1, 463) = 7.54, p = .006) and more aggression on the voodoo doll task. Across all measures, displaced aggression had the strongest association with hoarding (b = .31, p  < .001). As hoarding was significantly associated with anxious attachment, a mediation model investigated the indirect effect of hoarding symptoms on displaced aggression through anxious attachment. This model was supported (β=.17, SE = .02, 95% CI = .13, .22). Taken together, these results suggest the relevance of anger to the emerging social impairment models of hoarding.