خشونت جابجا شده جوانان در برابر گروه های همسالان داخل و بیرون از گروه: بررسی تجربی

People often displace their anger and aggression against innocent targets, sometimes called scapegoats. Tragic historic events suggest that members of ethnic minority out-groups may be especially likely to be innocent targets. The current experiment examined displaced aggression of Dutch youths against Dutch in-group peers versus Moroccan out-group peers. Participants (N = 137, Mage = 11.6 years) completed a personal profile that was allegedly evaluated by Dutch peer judges. After randomly receiving negative or neutral feedback from these peers, participants were given the opportunity to aggress against other innocent Dutch and Moroccan peers by taking money earned away from them. Results showed that in response to negative feedback, participants displaced aggression disproportionally against innocent Moroccan out-group targets. This effect was not driven by ethnic prejudice; in both conditions, participants holding more negative attitudes of Moroccans engaged in higher levels of aggression regardless of the ethnicity of the target.

In today’s society, human aggressive behavior is omnipresent and ranks among the most serious problems facing our species. Aggression is any behavior that is intended to harm another person ( Bushman & Huesmann, 2010). Aggression is direct when the target is the provocateur. Aggression is displaced when the target is innocent of any wrongdoing but is simply in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” Prototypically, displaced aggression occurs when a person cannot aggress or is constrained from aggressing against the source of provocation. Direct retaliatory aggression might not be possible because the source of the initial provocation is unavailable (e.g., the provocateur has left the situation). Fear of retaliation or punishment from the provocateur may also constrain direct aggression ( Marcus-Newhall, Pedersen, Carlson, & Miller, 2000). For example, if the provocateur is strong or powerful, people may be reluctant to aggress directly against the provocateur and may instead displace their aggression toward innocent targets, sometimes called scapegoats. Meta-analytic findings have shown that displaced aggression among adults is a robust phenomenon (Marcus-Newhall et al., 2000). Surprisingly, only one experimental study has investigated displaced aggression in youths (Reijntjes, Kamphuis, Thomaes, Bushman, & Telch, in press). This is unfortunate because displaced aggression is clearly not confined to adults. School shootings may be extreme examples of displaced aggression among youths. More common examples include youths verbally or physically aggressing against innocent siblings or peers. A recent study among young adolescents examined how situational factors (e.g., provocateur availability, provocation intensity) and dispositional factors (e.g., callousness, trait aggressiveness) interact to influence displaced aggression (Reijntjes et al., in press). Results revealed that displaced aggression was more likely to occur when the level of provocation was high and when provocateurs were unavailable for direct retaliation. Trait aggressiveness was positively associated with both types of aggression. In contrast, dispositional callousness (i.e., proneness to make use of others coldheartedly and the relative absence of guilt and empathy) predicted displaced but not direct aggression, suggesting that different factors may contribute to the propensity to harm innocent others versus provocateurs.

Negative peer feedback can yield substantial levels of displaced aggression. The current research shows that out-group peers (“them”) are more likely than in-group peers (“us”) to be chosen as targets of displaced aggression. It is noteworthy that the provocateurs in our experiment were Dutch youths. Perhaps it would not be too surprising to find that Dutch youths are more likely to displace their aggression against innocent Moroccan peers than against innocent Dutch peers if Moroccan peers would have provoked them first. Yet the Dutch participants in our experiment displaced their aggression against Moroccan peers even though the peers who provoked them were Dutch, not Moroccan. Hence, our findings demonstrate that innocent members of the ethnic out-group served as genuine scapegoats.