社会等级对女性反应性攻击的影响

The influence of social status on reactive aggression in females

反应性攻击与社会等级广泛影响着社会生活,然而有关两者之间关系的研究却十分罕见。本实验采用数学竞赛成绩排名的方式操纵社会等级,采用修改版的泰勒攻击范式测量反应性攻击程度,令女性被试分别与比自己等级高和比自己等级低的对家进行一个扑克牌匹配任务。如果被试选择的牌与对家的选择一样,则被试赢,对家接受被试之前选择的强度的惩罚(噪音);如果被试选择的牌与对家的选择不一样,则被试输,被试接受对家之前选择的强度的惩罚。实验后,被试完成一些主观问卷测量。结果发现,当对手等级比自己高时,被试选择高强度惩罚的比率显著高于当对手比自己等级低时,主观报告的部分维度也表现了相同趋势,说明女性被试针对高等级者的反应性攻击水平强于针对低等级者的反应性攻击,原因可能是被试对不同等级者的态度或期待存在差异。由于男性反应性攻击倾向普遍强于女性,本研究结果应该可以推广到男性群体。因此,本研究的发现证实了社会等级对反应性攻击的影响。

Both reactive aggression and social status widely affect people’s daily life.However,few studies have been conducted to investigate how individuals’social status influence their reactive aggression or retaliation.In the current study,we examined female participants’retaliation behavior when they completed a card-matching task(a variant of Taylor Aggression Paradigm)with high or low social status opponents.If the two cards were the same,the opponent would receive an noise punishment with an intensity selected previously by the participant;if the two cards were different,the participant would receive an electric shock selected previously by the opponent.Before this task,the participant and five opponents completed a math competition task and their social status(with a star-ranking system)was determined by this task.After the experiment,all the participants were required to fill out questionnaires concerning their perception of the experimental setup and their behaviors and attitudes towards the opponents.Results from the card-matching task showed that the female participants were more likely to choose high-level punishment for their opponents of relatively high ranking than for those of relatively low ranking.Results from the questionnaires were consistent with this finding,suggesting that individuals have different attitudes or expectations towards others of different social status and a violation of this expectation would result in higher reactive responses.Since males tend to have stronger reactive aggression behaviors than females,our results could be extended to them.Therefore,the current study provides empirical support for the influence of social status on reactive aggression.