Banning the deviant out-group member: the use of anger and contempt toward in-group and out-group members

Prior research has argued that contempt behaves as an exclusionary emotion generally felt against strangers, whereas anger tends to be an attack emotion felt toward close others (Fischer & Roseman, 2007). Participants were assigned to conditions where they interacted with a target player who was either an in-group or out-group member who behaved in either socially adherent or deviant ways. It was hypothesized that when the player was a deviant out-group member, the participant would experience higher levels of contempt than the ingroup deviant, whereas participants interacting with an in-group deviant were expected to experience higher levels of anger than the out-group deviant. The results of the experiment demonstrate that participants tended to desire more control over an in-group deviant than an out-group deviant. The findings demonstrated here can be applied to studies of aggression, group dynamics, and the black sheep effect (Marques & Paez, 2011). Chapter One: Introduction “True, genuine contempt, which is the obverse of true, genuine pride, stays hidden away in secret and lets no one suspect its existence: for if you let a person you despise notice the fact, you thereby reveal a certain respect for him, inasmuch as you want him to know how low you rate him — which betrays not contempt but hatred, which excludes contempt and only affects it. Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another. ” --Arthur Schopenhauer in Counsels and Maxims As Schopenhauer establishes in the epigraph, hatred and contempt are not synonyms. Contempt is the emotional manifestation of a person’s devaluation into nothingness; it marks a judgment of a person being beyond consideration and unworthy of respect, even such respect as to be despised. Contempt, though being one of the seven universally recognized emotions according to Ekman and Heider (1988), has remained in relative obscurity in psychological literature though its effects as a motivator of behavior may still be profound and impactful, particularly in regard to interpersonal rejection. Contempt may play a major role may in the ostracizing of other people. Ostracism has been referred to as a “social death” in that those who are rejected are placed in a position where others treat them as though they do not exists (Williams, 2007). Despite the large amount of prior literature that discusses ostracism and social exclusion as well as a number of studies on bullying and peer victimization (for bullying see Ranta, Kaltiala-Heino, Pelkonen & Marttunen, 2009; Xie et al., 2002; Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Kaukianinen, 1998), little experimental research has been conducted on the reasons why people reject others, and most prior research tends to focus on either dispositional personality Banning the Deviant Out-group Member 2 variables (Einarsen, 1999), biological and temperamental factors (Smith & Ananiadou, 2003), or family and environmental factors (Schwartz, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1997). As of now, limited research has assessed the relationship of contempt to exclusion nor are these effects clearly distinguished from anger and its relation to rejection, victimization, and aggression. Taking a social function approach to emotion and rejection, this thesis aimed to understand and clarify the differences between anger and contempt. Specifically, this experiment examined how contempt and anger operate differently as a function of in-group and out-group dynamics and how these dynamics are affected by interpersonal interaction between in-group and out-group members. Although it was expected that participants would experience more anger toward members of their own group, participants may be more likely to experience more contempt toward out-group members who violate proscriptive norms and reject that person than in-group members who behave similarly. The introduction will explore previous research on 1) inter-group dynamics and conflict, 2) the social functions of emotions with particular emphasis on anger and contempt, and 3) prior research on intragroup conflict/sanctions and out-group rejection.