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Resistance to Group or Personal Insults in an Ingroup or Outgroup Context
Author(s) -
Bond Michael Harris,
Venus Chung Kwok
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207599108246851
Subject(s) - outgroup , ingroups and outgroups , psychology , collectivism , social psychology , insult , impression management , blame , loyalty , group cohesiveness , resistance (ecology) , in group favoritism , context (archaeology) , social group , social identity theory , individualism , political science , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , paleontology , law , biology
This experiment was designed to evaluate the effect of different types of insults in different social contexts on the victim's resistance to the attack. In a teaching exercise, which was purportedly measuring their intelligence, students were insulted for their incompetence by their teacher in various situations: when alone, in front of an ingroup member, or in front of an outgroup member. In half the cases this personal insult was augmented by one impugning the competence of the student's academic ingroup as well. Direct resistance showed a complex pattern of results, reflecting concerns about managing an impression of group loyalty and personal detachment. Measures of indirect resistance showed higher levels in the public, as opposed to the private contexts, and were conceptualised as reflecting esteem deflation. These results thus amplify and extend into the logic of a collectivist culture hypotheses (Felson, 1978) about aggression as impression management.