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Sex differences in aggression: Are current notions misleading?
Author(s) -
Da Gloria Jorge,
De Ridder Richard
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2420090105
Subject(s) - psychology , aggression , norm (philosophy) , social psychology , provocation test , developmental psychology , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , political science , law
Studied experimentally the influence of norms and sex of subjects on aggressive behaviour in same sex dyads. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) subjects will react aggressively to an unpleasant state of affairs, if they interpret it as being the result of violation of a norm on the part of another; (2) female subjects will display more aggression than male subjects under conditions of repeated provocation while male subjects will be more aggressive under conditions of infrequent or no provocation. In a 2 × 2 × 2 complete factorial design (norm violation versus norm enforcement; male versus female; low versus high reward for performance) 20 same sex pairs of students performed alternatively a sensory‐motor task (victim) and a shock delivery task (aggressor). As predicted, subjects who consider other's behaviour to be a norm violation aggress more often (p <.0001). A significant interaction between sex of subject and norm violation is found in support for the second hypothesis (p <.05). It is concluded that positions grounded on the S‐R paradigm are misleading for the understanding of sex differences in aggression.