Aggressive behavior often occurs in the context of alcohol and drug misuse, though plenty of violence is committed by sober parties (Collins & Messerschmidt, 1993; Martin, 1992). Yet it remains unclear if these tendencies towards alcohol-related, drug-related, and non-substance-related aggression reflect a common aggressive disposition or if they reflect easily distinguishable phenotypes. Using confirmatory factor analyses, we found empirical support for our preregistered predictions that participants’ individual differences in these three phenotypes are accurately characterized as distinct, though modestly correlated, latent constructs. Indeed, this three factor model fit the data better than a single-factor model or a hybrid, two-factor approach in which alcohol-related and drug-related aggression items loaded onto a substance-related factor. These findings suggest that each of these three constructs might be unique additions to hierarchical taxonomies and nosologies of aggression phenotypes (Parrott & Giancola, 2007), which have previously neglected to articulate them among other forms of aggressive behavior.
