Page 283 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 265

erate. What happened? Contrary to the catharsis hypothesis people
who had previously shocked the confederate delivered more frequent
and more intense shocks the second time around.
The same kind of behavior has also been observed systematically
in naturally occurring events in the real world, where verbal acts of
aggression served to facilitate further attacks. In this “natural exper-
iment,” a number of technicians working for a company were laid off.
Thus they were understandably angry at their employers. Several
were then provided with a chance to verbalize their hostility against
their ex-bosses. Later, all of the technicians were asked to describe
their bosses. Those who previously had been allowed to vent their
feelings were much nastier in their subsequent descriptions than those
who had not. 30
Taking all of this together it is clear that venting anger—directly
or indirectly, verbally or physically—does not reduce hostility. It in-
creases it.

Retaliation, Overkill, and Escalation Why does expressing ag-
gression lead to greater hostility? For one thing, once we express neg-
ative feelings toward another person—once we label our ex-boss a
heartless jerk—it becomes that much easier to follow such behavior
with consistent statements and actions, particularly if we have retal-
iated in public. Moreover, retaliation is typically more severe than the
initial insult or attack; we tend to engage in overkill, which sets the
stage for dissonance reduction. An experiment by Michael Kahn
31
shows how overkill leads to derogation of the victim. In Kahn’s ex-
periment, a medical technician, taking physiological measurements
from college students, made derogatory remarks about these stu-
dents. In one condition, the students were allowed to vent their hos-
tility by expressing their feelings about the technician to his
employer—an action that they knew would get the technician into
serious trouble, probably costing him his job. In another condition,
they were not provided with the opportunity to express any aggres-
sion against him. The results were clear: Those given the opportu-
nity to get the technician in trouble subsequently felt greater dislike
and hostility toward the technician than did those not given the op-
portunity.
Overkill maximizes dissonance. The greater the discrepancy be-
tween what the perpetrator did to you and your retaliation, the greater