Page 295 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 277

third-grade children by having another child’s clumsiness prevent
them from achieving a goal that would have resulted in a cash prize.
Some of these children were subsequently provided with a reason-
able and unspiteful explanation for the behavior of the child who
fouled them up. Specifically, they were told he had been “sleepy and
upset.” The children in this condition directed much less aggression
against the thwarting child than did children who were not given this
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explanation. Moreover, later research using adult subjects indicates
that we are less apt to retaliate against someone who has provoked
our anger when we hear a good excuse for their behavior before it oc-
curs rather than after the fact.
On the other side of the coin, the tendency for frustration to pro-
voke aggression can be strengthened if the experience of frustration
is combined with exposure to certain provocative stimuli. Leonard
Berkowitz and his colleagues have shown that, if an individual is an-
gered or frustrated, the mere mention of a word or name associated
with the provocation will increase that person’s level of aggression. In
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one experiment, subjects were paired with another student (an ac-
complice of the experimenter) who was introduced either as a “col-
lege boxer” or as a “speech major.” This accomplice provoked the
subjects by shocking them; then half the angered subjects viewed a
violent prizefighting scene from a movie while the others watched an
exciting but nonaggressive film clip. When subsequently given the
chance to shock the confederate, the subject who had seen the vio-
lent movie segment administered more and longer shocks, as we
would expect from the preceding discussion. Interestingly, however,
among the subjects who had seen the prizefighting film, those paired
with the “boxer” delivered more shocks to that target than those
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paired with the “speech major.” In a similar experiment, the accom-
plice was introduced to some subjects as “Kirk Anderson” and to oth-
ers as “Bob Anderson.” Again, the subjects watched one of the two
film segments, and those watching the boxing sequence delivered
greater shocks. But among those watching the fight scene, which was
taken from the then-popular movie The Champion, which starred
Kirk Douglas, those subjects who had been introduced to “Kirk An-
derson” administered more shocks than those paired with “Bob An-
derson.” Apparently, the description or the name of a person can act
as a cue to increase the aggression directed against that target, even
if it has nothing to do with what that person actually did.