Performance monitoring of aggressive behavior in impulsive individuals: threat sensitivity or response inhibition

Purpose Performance monitoring of aggressive behavior involves dynamic cognitive control, including threat detection and response inhibition, and this study aims to investigate whether impulsive individuals’ impaired monitoring stems from heightened threat sensitivity or weakened response inhibition, moderated by threat types and cognitive load, through two experiments. Design/methodology/approach Experiment 1 (n = 42) used the combined flanker–stop-signal task to verify whether impulsivity can affect threat detection and response inhibition in performance monitoring. Experiment 2 (n = 100), building upon Experiment 1, examined the influence of cognitive load on the response monitoring of impulsive individuals by increasing cognitive load and expanding the types of threats. Findings Experiment 1 found that highly impulsive individuals showed greater threat sensitivity but similar response inhibition compared to low-impulsive individuals. Aggressive threats impair the impulsive person’s ability to inhibit responses. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the weakening effect of cognitive load on impulsive individuals’ response inhibition was different with different types of threats, and the weakening effect of cognitive load on symbolic threats was greater than that of realistic threats. Cognitive load enhances the ability of low-impulsive individuals to filter out irrelevant information and modulates the processing of symbolic and realistic threats in high- and low-impulsive individuals’ ability to defend against reputation. Originality/value This research uses a combined flanker–stop-signal task across two experiments to examine how impulsivity influences threat detection and response inhibition. Experiment 1 reveals that highly impulsive individuals exhibit greater threat sensitivity, particularly to aggressive threats but show no significant deficits in response inhibition compared to low-impulsive individuals. Experiment 2 extends these findings by demonstrating that cognitive load differentially affects response inhibition across various threat types, with symbolic threats having a more pronounced impact under high cognitive load. Additionally, electrophysiological data (error-related negativity, N2 and P2 components) provide insights into the neural underpinnings of these processes, highlighting the interplay between impulsivity, cognitive load and threat type in modulating performance monitoring.