Social psychology
Chapter 13
Aggression and conflict
Defining aggression and conflict
Aggression, defined by people’s immediate intention to hurt each other, is often set in motion by incompatible goals. There are two types of aggression
Aggression: behavior intended to harm someone else.
Conflict: a perceived incompatibility of goals between tow or more parties.
Aggression often has its roots in conflict. What one party wants, the other party sees as harmful to its interests.
Conflict between individuals and groups is acted out in many forms.
Aggression and conflict between individuals and groups are found throughout the world.
They generally fall into two distinct categories.
Origins of aggression
Humans have evolved to compete effectively for good and mates. Although the capacity to act aggressively may have helped, aggression has no special place in ‘human nature’. Aggression is just one strategy among many others that humans use to attain rewards and respect, and too is influenced by cognitive processes and social forces.
Research on aggression
Aggression can be difficult to study experimentally because people are often unwilling to act aggressively when they are being observed. Researchers have used a variety of techniques to get around these problems.
Whether aggression is between individuals or between groups, it is usually triggered by perceptions and interpretations of some event or situation.
What causes interpersonal aggression? The role of rewards and respect
Aggression is triggered by a variety of factors. Some aggression is a result of mastery needs. Potential rewards make this kind of aggression more likely and costs of risks make it less likely. Sometimes, however, perceived provocation such as treat to the self-esteem or connectedness produces anger, which can also set of aggression. Many negative emotions can make aggression more likely. Norms too can promote aggressive behavior.
Counting rewards and costs
When aggression pays, it becomes more likely.
When rewards are withdrawn, aggression usually subsides. Even the possibility of punishment can deter aggression, if the threat is believed.
Rewards and costs are especially relevant for instrumental aggression, and often involve more systematic thinking about the situation, as opposed to an immediate emotional reaction.
One factor that enters into the cost-benefit equation of aggression is the aggressor’s personal abilities.
It is the perception of rewards and costs that trigger aggression.
Responding to threats
Interpersonal aggression frequently occurs in response to threats to self-esteem or connections to valued people or groups.
Any blow to self-esteem is worse if it is public. The presence of an audience may make aggressive responses to self-esteem threats more likely.
Perhaps the most extreme threat to self-esteem is the reminder that the self doesn’t last forever.
It can lead to aggression, specifically against someone who attacks one’s worldview.
Different people react in different ways to potential loss of respect.
Some individual’s are also more likely than others to interpret others’ act as provocations.
Threats to one’s sense of self, self-worth, or sense of belonging often trigger hostile aggression, fueled by a negative emotional reaction to the provocation.
Such provocations sometimes lead people to act aggressively without regard for the likelihood of reward or punishment.
The role of negative emotions
When people’s important mastery or connectedness goals are blocked or threatened, they generally feel negative emotions, which are strongly associated with aggression.
Frustration-aggression theory: a theory holding that any frustration, defined as the blocking of an important goal, inevitably triggers aggression.
Aggression is set off not so much by the blocking of a goal, but by the negative feelings that result.
A variety of conditions that create negative feelings can trigger aggression.
Increasing aggression: models and cues
Other people’s aggressive actions, including portrayals in the media, may indicate that aggression is appropriate. Cues in a specific situation, such as the presence of guns or other weapons, may also increase the accessibility of thoughts related to aggression. Both of these types of factors therefore make aggression more likely to occur.
Potential rewards, as well as threats that lead to negative emotions, may be the fundamental driving forces behind interpersonal aggression. However, external influences can push us further along the path to actual harmful action.
Models of aggression
Other people’s actions offer clues to the behavior that is appropriate in a situation.
Learned cues to aggression
Weapons, and especially guns, are strongly associated with the idea of aggression. If seeing a weapon cues thoughts of aggression, this in turn should make aggressive behavior more likely, and so it does.
People differ.
Common stereotypes can make observers more ready to see, or to imagine to see, a gun in the hand of members of some groups than of others.
Different countries’ norms about the acceptability of owning firearms may also influence incidents of aggressive behavior.
Deciding whether or not to aggress
Situations that favor superficial thinking often favor aggression. Thinking carefully can reduce aggression, but many factors interfere with people’s motivation and ability to process information carefully and evenhandedly, increasing the likelihood of aggression.
You need both motivation and capacity to find ways to resolve your conflict peacefully.
Several factors may limit people’s capacity to process deeply even when they are motivated to do so, often increasing the odds of aggression.
Putting it all together: the general aggression model
The General aggression model: a theory that person and situation factors influence people’s cognition, emotions, and arousal, which in turn influence interpretations of the situation and decisions about aggression.
The desire to act aggressively is not always carried out, because social norms and the actions of others also play a major role in the decision to initiate or restrain aggression.
Person Situation
Current internal state
Appraisal and decision processes
Thoughtful action Impulsive action
Sources of intergroup conflict: the battle for riches and respect
Most group conflict stems from competition for valued material resources or for social rewards such as respect and esteem. People use social comparisons to determine acceptable levels of resources. Groups in conflict are often more attuned to social rewards than to material ones.
Although groups are often more competitive and aggressive than individuals, groups and individuals turn to aggression for the same basic reasons.
Realistic conflict theory: getting the goods
Realistic conflict theory: the theory that intergroup hostility arises from competition among groups for scare but valued material resources.
The potential gain or loss of material resources motivates intergroup aggression.
Group competition can quickly escalate from dislike into hostility and aggression.
Relative deprivation: when is enough enough
Relative deprivation theory: the theory that feelings of discontent arise from the belief that other individuals or other groups are better of.
Fraternal relative deprivation: the sense that one’s group is not doing as well as other groups.
Has little to do with objective levels of adequacy or success.
Much more likely to cause intergroup conflict than is egoistic deprivation.
Social competition: getting a little respect
Groups also fight over social goods: respect, esteem and ‘bragging rights’.
Social identity. People’s desire to see their own groups as better than other groups can lead to intergroup bias and can contribute to conflict.
The special competitiveness of groups: groups often value respect over riches
One reason for the greater competitiveness of groups than individuals:
When groups vie to be ‘number one’, social competition and the effort to outdo one’s opponent frequently overshadow competition for material resources.
Escalating conflict: group communication and interaction
Once conflict starts, poor communication can make it worse. In-group interaction hardens in-group opinions, threats are directed at the out-group, each group retaliates more and more harshly, and other parties choose sides. All of these processes tend to escalate the conflict.
Talking to the in-group: polarization and commitment
Discussion won’t help if the only person you talk to are those who take your side.
Talking things over with like-minded group members pushes other group members toward extreme views. (group polarization)
As a result of group discussion, then, people may see their group’s position as even more valid and valuable, and they may become even more firmly attached to it.
During discussion, we also become more committed to our views.
As group members see themselves getting worked up, they conclude that they must care a lot about the issues. Dissonance-reduction.
The special competitiveness of groups: when conflict arises, groups close ranks
In situations of conflict, groups demand loyalty, solidarity, and strict adherence to group norms.
Leaders sometimes take advantage of the unifying effect of conflict to strengthen their hold on power.
Talking to the out-group: back off, or else!
As positions harden, groups find it increasingly difficult to communicate productively, so persuasion and discussion often give way to threats and attempt coercion.
Most people believe that threats increase their bargaining power and their chances of getting their way. As a result both groups tend to use threats, leaving neither group with an advantage.
But threats provoke counterthreats, diminish people’s willingness to compromise, and in the end generate hostility.
Threats usually are counterproductive. They threatened group may assume that aggression is inevitable no matter how it responds. And if it responds with a counterthreat, the first group’s belief in the opponent’s hostility and unwillingness to compromise will be confirmed.
Threats and counterthreats almost invariably escalate in intensity rather than staying in the same level.
When threats dominate communication, they crowd out messages about cooperative solutions.
Vicarious retribution: they hurt us, now I hurt them
The direct victims of a real or perceived intergroup attack or insult are not the only ones who want to retaliate.
Vicarious retribution: members of a group who were not themselves directly harmed by an attack retaliating against members of the offending group.
With so many new potential perpetrators, further incidents between groups become likely.
Coalition formation: escalation as others choose sides
Coalition formation: occurs when two or more parties pool their resources to obtain a mutual goal they probably could not achieve alone.
Tends to polarize multiple parties into two opposing sides.
When two groups are in conflict, coalition formation is usually seen as a threatening action that, like most threats, only intensifies competition.
Those excluded form the coalition may react with fear and anger, and they often form their own coalitions.
As unaffiliated groups ally wit one side or the other, differences become polarized and the dangerous allure of consensus convinces each side that it is right.
Perceptions in conflict: what else could you expect from them?
As escalation continues, the in-group sees the out-group as totally evil and sees itself in unrealistically positive terms. Emotion and arousal make these biases even worse.
These conflict-driven perceptions may have little basis in reality, but they affect the group’s understanding of what is happening and why.
This skewed understanding in turn becomes a guide for group behavior.
Polarized perceptions of in-group and out-group
Groups enmeshed in conflict tend to develop three blind spots in their thinking:
Biased attributions for behavior
Groups in conflict frequently attribute identical behaviors by the in-group and the out-group to diametrically opposed causes.
In the context of conflict, attributions for in-group and out-group actions are biased in two different ways:
The impact of emotion and arousal: more heat, less light
As conflict rises, people experience tension, anger, anxiety, frustration, and fear.
This emotional arousal affects processes of perception and communication and produces simplistic thinking.
As complex thinking shuts down, decisions are based on simple stereotypes, snap judgments, and automatic reactions.
Emotions can not only lead to oversimple thinking about an opposing group, but also direct behaviors toward that group, often in negative ways.
Of particular importance are the emotions that people feel when they are thinking of themselves as members of their group. Group-based emotions depend on the particular nature of the threats that an out-group is seen as opposing.
Distinct emotions can motivate different types of action toward an out-group.
The special competitiveness of groups: people expect groups to be super-competitive, so they react in kind
Biased an extreme perceptions of out-groups are another reason why groups act more competitively than individuals.
People expect groups o be highly competitive and hostile. This expectation has a self-fulfilling quality.
‘Final solutions’: eliminating the out-group
Ultimately, conflict may escalate into an attempt at total domination or destruction of the out-group. When power differences exist between the groups and the out-group is morally excluded, one group may try to eliminate the other.
Three factors seem particularly important in pushing a group to seek a ‘final solution’ to intergroup differences one the groundwork of intergroup hostility and conflict has been laid.
Gradually escalate
The special competitiveness of groups: groups offer social support for competitiveness
Groups offer a rich soil for rationalizing negative acts that are motivated by greed or by fear of the out-group.
Altering perceptions and reactions
Approaches to reducing aggression and conflict include promoting norms of nonaggression, minimizing or removing the cues that often cause individuals to commit aggressive acts, and encouraging careful interpretation and identification with others.
Promote norms of non-aggression
Norms are usually most effective in limiting aggression against other in-group members. Similarity reduces aggression.
Because:
Minimize cues for aggression
Some cues activate aggressive thoughts and feelings, making overt acts of aggression more likely.
Not only the removal of negative cues, but also the presence of more positive cues may reduce the likelihood of aggression.
Interpret, and interpret again
In most cases, systematic thought seems to be helpful in preventing aggression.
Engaging in self-distancing might help.
Promote empathy with others
Encouraging people to move closer to another person’s perspective.
Aggression is easiest when victims are distanced and dehumanized.
Empathy is a fellow feelings, and fellow feeling is incompatible with aggression.
Resolving conflict through negotiation
Conflict resolution also involves the parties in trying to find mutually acceptable solutions, which requires understanding and trust. When direct discussion is unproductive, third parties can intervene to help the parties settle their conflict.
Types of solutions
Achieving solutions: the negotiation process
Negotiation: the process by which parties in conflict communicate and influence each other to reach agreement.
Successful resolution of conflict requires sufficient time for negotiation.
When adequate time is available, the fundamental goal of negotiators is to help each party understand how the other interprets and evaluates the issues.
Building trust
One of he priorities of negotiation is to build trust, so that parties will abandon their search for negative motives within each other’s proposals.
Negotiators usually try to break conflicts into sets of small, manageable issues. When one party successfully negotiates an issue with the opponent, liking and trust for the other party increase, perhaps making later issues easier to settle.
Mediation and arbitration: bringing in third parties
Direct communication is not always the best way to resolve conflicts.
Advantages of third party involvement:
Intergroup cooperation: changing social identity
Conflict resolution can also be facilitated by having groups cooperate toward shared goals that can be attained only if both groups work together. Under the proper conditions, cooperative intergroup interaction reduces conflict.
Superordinate goals
Superordinate goals: shared goals that can be attained only if groups work together.
Superordinate goals improved intergroup relationships, but not overnight.
Why does intergroup cooperation work?
Intergroup cooperation is not a foolproof cure for conflict. But when the right conditions exist, intergroup cooperation undermines many processes that contribute to conflict and ti encourages positive interaction and even friendship, which can ultimately reduce prejudice.
Forming a new and more inclusive in-group works best in solving intergroup conflict if the original groups retain some measure of distinctiveness. This highlights that the contact between members is truly intergroup.
Under the right conditions, intergroup cooperation not only leads group members to think of themselves in terms of a higher-level common identity, bu also encourages them to get to know out-group members as individuals.
Intergroup cooperation for superordinate goals hods the promise of true conflict resolution, rather than conflict management.
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