Unprovoked aggression and provoked aggression in human contacts
Creators: name: Qiu, Xiaoke
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: C800 - Psychology
C880 - Social psychology

description: Theories of aggression have been proposed to differentiate the different types of aggression humans display and explain their causes. One way to describe aggression is to differentiate it into two subtypes: provoked and unprovoked. Provoked aggression is driven by a perceived threat and emotional arousal; it is known as hot-blooded aggression. Unprovoked aggression is goal-oriented and without emotional arousal; it is known as “cold-blooded” aggression. Notwithstanding the subtype, aggressive behaviour leads to both physical and psychological harm to the victim and sometimes punishment for the aggressors. This thesis examines the factors affecting unprovoked and provoked aggressions using a series of online experiments.Chapter 2 built and developed a new paradigm to assess unprovoked and provoked aggression: memory competition experiment. The memory competition tested unprovoked aggression by block and steal interference and tested provoked aggression by noise interference. Analysis indicated the proportion of steal interference was related to proactive aggression subscale in Reactive Proactive Aggression Questionnaire and participants were angrier when they used noise interference than used other interference or did not interfere. The results supported memory competition assessed unprovoked aggression by steal interference and provoked aggression by noise interference.Chapter 3 employed the memory competition experiment developed in Chapter 2, together with Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale to test the relationship among provoked aggression, psychological resilience, and emotion regulation. Psychological resilience buffered provoked aggression and maladaptive emotion regulation predicted it.Chapter 4, 5 and 6 explored unprovoked aggression in intergroup competition. Chapter 4 examined intergroup competition between pairs of participants coming from distinct social identities from one another. Competition between rival football fans was used as an experimental scenario to analyse unprovoked aggression. The result indicated only intergroup competition between rival social identities induced unprovoked aggression. Chapter 5 examined unprovoked aggression between rival football fans under different group norms (i.e. aggressive vs prosocial) and different ingroup positions (i.e. prototypical vs. peripheral). Unprovoked aggression increased when participants were assigned to a group where aggressive group norms where in place in comparison when the group had a prosocial group norm. Ingroup position moderated the extent to which participants aligned to the norm assigned to their group: prototypical group members were more likely to follow the group norms than peripheral group members. Chapter 6 tested whether individuals used unprovoked aggression to pursue their personal profits or maximise their group profits under different group norms. It supported the results from the last experiment that there was a reduction in aggression whenever unprovoked aggression that helped a rival group win the memory competition and made the participants’ own group lose competition.In sum, the series of experiments built a new paradigm: memory competition to assess unprovoked and provoked aggression. Psychological resilience, emotion regulation, social identity, group norm, ingroup position and cost-benefit analysis were found to influence unprovoked and provoked aggression. The implication and limitation were discussed in the discussion chapter.