Person Perception and the Study of Aggression

Summary A critical analysis of the concept of aggression provided a basis for empirically demonstrating the relativity involved in the use of the label “aggressive.” Male and female undergraduates (N = 60) were employed as naive observers and were given descriptions of a frequently used paradigm in the study of aggression. They read one of three scenarios depicting the interaction of two persons in a competitive reaction-time game involving the exchange of electric shocks of various intensities. Results showed that observers were highly consistent in their labeling of behavior. In the depicted scenarios, a player was labeled as nonaggressive, defensive, good, and impotent as long as his shock intensity settings were lower than the other player's, and were labeled as aggressive, offensive, bad, and potent when he set higher intensities than his opponent.