هنگامی که طرد شدگی منجر به پرخاشگری می کند: اثرات تعدیل محرومیت کنترل

We hypothesized that increasing or decreasing levels of control in an ostracized individual could moderate aggressive responding to ostracism. Participants were either ostracized or included in a spontaneous game of toss, and then exposed to a series of blasts of aversive noise, the onsets over which they had either control or no control. Aggression was defined as the amount of hot sauce participants allocated to a stranger, knowing the stranger did not like hot foods, but would have to consume the entire sample. Ostracized participants without control allocated more than four times as much sauce as any other group; ostracized participants who experienced restored control were no more aggressive than either of the groups who were included. Aggressive responding to ostracism may depend on the degree to which control needs are threatened in the target, and is discussed in terms of Williams’s (2001) needs threat model of ostracism.

What is the relationship between ostracism and aggression? Recent laboratory findings suggest that social exclusion can lead to increased aggression (Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001), and an examination of 15 recent school shootings in the US, implicates “acute or chronic rejection… in the form of ostracism, bullying and/or romantic rejection” as a possible causal factor in 87% of cases (Leary, Kowalski, Smith, & Phillips, 2003, p. 202). Conversely, aggressive behavior may also result in ostracism (see McDougall, Hymel, Vaillancourt, & Mercer, 2001, for a review), and so it seems feasible that for some individuals, ostracism and aggression may be mutually causative, with each feeding the other and causing a spiraling escalation in both. In a longitudinal study by Kupersmidt, Burchinal, and Patterson (1995), not only did rejection predict aggression in elementary and middle school students, but as rejection increased over time, so did aggression. If such a cycle does exist, then factors that can moderate aggressive responding to ostracism (we call this the outcast-lash-out effect), may prevent ostracism-related aggression from escalating into outright violence. Identifying outcast-lash-out moderators is complicated, however, because of inconsistencies in the research findings related to rejection, social exclusion, and ostracism (see Warburton & Williams, 2005). Some studies have found that ostracism elicits pro-social responses, whereas other research using rejection and social exclusion paradigms have found anti-social responses. It might be tempting to dismiss these differences as an artifact of the different definitions and methods used. After all, ostracism refers to being ignored and excluded, and is usually manipulated experimentally in vivo, but research into both rejection (which implies initial or anticipated acceptance) and social exclusion (which implies not being included) generally uses paradigms in which excluded/rejected participants receive news of future exclusion/rejection through a third party or via feedback from a personality test. We can find no reason, however, why these operationalizations should be so fundamentally dissimilar as to produce opposite results. Rather, in the absence of a better explanation, we assume that all three paradigms reliably produce perceptions of social exclusion and could produce either pro- or anti-social responses, but that, as yet, studies have not manipulated or assessed the types of moderating factors that can determine the direction of the sociality of responses. To address this gap, the focus of this paper will be to determine whether we can steer ostracism-related behaviors toward or away from aggressiveness by manipulating a relevant moderating factor that underlies the direction of the response. Why should ostracism lead to aggression? Twenge et al. (2001) suggested that social exclusion might weaken normal social restraints on selfish and aggressive behavior, thus releasing an instinctual drive to aggress. This explanation appears to predict an increase in aggressive responding to all instances of social exclusion and does not adequately explain the many findings in which ostracism, despite being painful ( Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003), has elicited pro-social rather than aggressive behaviors, such as conformity ( Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000) social compensation ( Williams & Sommer, 1997); unconscious mimicry ( Lakin & Chartrand, in press), and increased attention to and processing of social information ( Gardner et al., 2000 and Pickett et al., 2004). Similarly, Baumeister, Twenge, and Ciarocco (2003) suggested that because social exclusion may lead to emotional numbness, cognitive overload and self-regulatory deficits (Twenge et al., 2002 and Twenge et al., 2003), it may also lead to aggression through a state of passivity in which the excluded individual’s resources are too depleted to either restrain aggressive impulses or resist group pressures. Although this hypothesis offers an explanation for both pro-social and anti-social responses to ostracism, it cannot adequately account for findings that ostracism can elicit various effortful pro-social behaviors, such as social compensation and increased processing of social information. It is possible, however, that another factor may be instrumental in the outcast-lash-out effect. According to Williams, 1997 and Williams, 2001 model of ostracism, an ostracized individual will experience an immediate threat to four basic human needs—belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence—and will consequently be motivated to restore those needs. Of these factors, control has considerable potential as an outcast-lash-out moderator, because there are demonstrated links between control and aggression. It should be noted here that belonging may best be fortified by pro-social behaviors, and can also achieve a sense of control. However, when control is sufficiently thwarted, desires to fortify control can outweigh desires to be liked, thus allowing aggression to be a functional response ( Warburton & Williams, 2005). Control and aggression Control has been linked to aggressive behavior in various ways. Mueller (1983) theorized that a loss of personal control leads to aggression either as a reactant attempt to restore a lost freedom or as an angry response to frustration. Tedeschi and Felson’s (1994) social interaction theory portrayed aggression as a coercive tool used to control others’ behavior. Other theorists have suggested that individuals may aggress as a way of restoring a generalized sense of personal power or control over others (see Depret and Fiske, 1993 and Frieze and Boneva, 2001). It also seems feasible that some acts of indirect (Richardson & Green, 1997), relational (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995), or displaced aggression (Marcus-Newhall, Pedersen, Carlson, & Miller, 2000), may be used as a means to restore a sense of personal control or power (e.g., Crick, Casus, & Mosher, 1997), perhaps through the device of symbolically asserting superiority over another (see Baumeister et al., 1996 and Williams and Warburton, 2003). There appears to be little experimental literature about the processes underlying control–aggression effects, but it seems reasonable to suggest that they may involve schemas or scripts in which an aggressive response is believed to be an effective remedy to a loss of control or power. According to script theories of aggression (e.g., Huesmann, 1986 and Huesmann, 1998), the activation of such knowledge structures by a relevant trigger (such as a significant loss of control), would set in motion linked goals and action plans, and these, in turn, may increase the likelihood of an aggressive response. Further, if an individual has control–aggression scripts that are chronically accessible, they might automatically respond to a loss of control trigger with aggression, and with little conscious awareness of the processes underlying their behavior (see Todorov & Bargh, 2002). Consistent with such a mechanism, recent findings in our laboratory show that individuals vary in the degree to which they hold control–aggression beliefs, and that higher levels of such beliefs predict greater aggressive responding to a control loss. If control–aggression effects are underpinned by such processes, they may be best mapped onto Anderson and Bushman’s (2002) General Aggression Model (GAM). The GAM proposes that inputs from the person (e.g., control–aggression beliefs, other relevant traits) and the situation (such as a perceived loss of control) combine to influence the individual’s present internal state, by activating relevant cognitions (e.g., control–aggression schemas or scripts) or affects, or by increasing levels of arousal. These three components (which may affect each other) influence the subsequent appraisal and decision-making processes that may ultimately lead to aggressive behaviors. The GAM differs from many previous models of aggression (e.g., Berkowitz, 1993 and Geen, 1990), by allowing for cognitions to mediate aggression without a preceding increase in negative affect. Thus, it is possible within the GAM for a loss of control trigger to lead to aggressive behavior without necessarily affecting an individual’s mood. This is important for the purposes of this paper, because the exclusion-aggression effects found by Twenge et al. (2001) were not accompanied by a lowering of mood. Ostracism, control, and aggression Given the links between control and aggression, we propose that the extent to which ostracism elicits aggression may be partly determined by the level of perceived personal control an individual has after an ostracism episode. Although ostracism alone threatens personal control, this threat may not be enough to override any barriers to aggression. For instance, the paradigms used by Williams and co-workers involve a short-term episode of being ignored and excluded in a (virtual or real) ball toss game. Such ostracism deprives control during the four minutes of ostracism, but does not imply a loss of control in the future. If, however, subsequent events further undermine the ostracized individual’s sense of control, the need to restore control may become a strong enough trigger to elicit an aggressive response. Interestingly, the findings of Twenge et al. (2001) seem to be somewhat consistent with such an explanation. Twenge et al., used two paradigms; the life-alone paradigm in which participants were given a prognosis of a future in which they would have no permanent close bonds with others, and the group-interaction paradigm in which a group of real participants began the experiment with a get-acquainted task, followed by feedback that none of the others wanted to work with the participant. We believe that both of the paradigms involve a substantial threat to control beyond simple exclusion. The life-alone paradigm, if believed by the participants, suggests that there is nothing they can do to change this outcome, thus greatly restricting their sense of control. Group-interaction participants probably experience the getting-acquainted task as pleasant and enjoyable, receiving positive feedback from the other real participants. Thus, when they receive rejection feedback following this activity it is likely to be both surprising and unexpected. This robs participants of two types of control: (1) direct control (i.e., each participant’s fate was determined by the choices of the other participants in the task) and (2) predictability (i.e., participants’ perceptions of the getting-acquainted activity were unrelated to the feedback that they ultimately received). It may even undermine their confidence in their ability to read the verbal and nonverbal signs of others.