Abstract
Aggressive episodes taxonomy: dimensional or categorical perception. This study aims to elaborate an empirical taxonomy based on the subject's perception about aggressive episodes personally experienced. A representative sample of 28 aggressive episodes was evaluated across 16 bipolar scales, witch were obtained in a previous normative study. After a transformation of the data, it were obtained dissimilarity matrices of order 28 x 28 (one for each subject). Then, the data were subjected to a Multidimensional Scaling with ALSCAL program (Takane, Young y Deleew, 1977) and to a cluster analysis. Both techniques revealed that the must important criteria for the perception and social representation process were seriousness, justifiability, instrumentality and social judgement factors. Finally, the adjustment of the representation obtained witch both techniques is compared, and the results discussed in terms of wether the subject's perceptions better fit to a dimensional continuum or to a discrete categories.
