| Description |
Both Berkowitz (1969, 1970) and Bandura (1973) have proposed that aggressive cues will facilitate aggression. Layton (1974) tested this proposition and found that physical aggression is facilitated by aggressive cues that are high in imagery value. When Turner (1974, unpublished) attempted to replicate these results with verbal aggression, he found significant increases in aggression for male subjects but not for females. One possibility for the lack of female aggression was that females responded with indirect aggression, which was not measured in the Turner study (Bardwick,1971). The present study measured the effects of differential imagery cues, insult arousal, and participant sex on levels of indirect and direct aggression. Male and female subjects were exposed to either an insult or no insult condition, and word lists previously rated as low imagery-aggressive connotation or high imagery-aggressive connotation in a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design. Subjects were exposed to the word lists in a verbal learning task then received a sham partner evaluation of themselves which was either an insulting or non-insulting statement. Subjects then wrote an evaluation of the anonymous (and non-existent) partner in response. Aggression was measured by eight raters who rated each sentence written by the subjects on a 0-3 scale for level of aggression. Mean levels of aggression were then determined for each subject and were analyzed using a priori planned comparisons. The results of the study supported the hypothesis that high imagery cues of aggressive connotation will interact with aggressive arousal, as produced by an insult, to significantly increase the level of aggressive response in male subjects. Females responded with less direct aggression than males, but were not significantly different on the indirect aggression measure. |
