Beaten
Marco Brambilla & Paolo Riva
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research tested whether observing the failure of another individual and experiencing schadenfreude (i.e., pleasure at others' misfortune) enhance the satisfaction of basic psychological needs in terms of self-esteem, control, belongingness, and meaningful existence. Considering hypothetical scenarios (Experiments 1 and 4), real-life experiences (Experiment 2), and ostensibly real interactions (Experiment 3), four experiments revealed that individuals reported higher levels of need satisfaction when another's setback occurred in a competitive circumstance rather than in a non-competitive circumstance. Moreover, the increased feeling of schadenfreude accounted for the effect of observing the misfortune befalling a competitor on the subsequent satisfaction of human needs. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for research on schadenfreude, and future research directions are outlined.
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Winner and loser effects in human competitions. Evidence from equally matched tennis players
Lionel Page & John Coates
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Animals winning an agonistic encounter are more likely to win their next encounter while losers are less likely, even when controlling for motivation and physical size. Do these winner and loser effects exist in human competitions? Drawing on a large database of professional tennis matches, we were able to control for players' ability and thereby test for winner and loser effects. We narrowed the database to matches between players who on average did not differ significantly in rank, and further to matches in which the first set was fought to a long tie-break. These closely fought matches present a natural experiment because players are assigned to treatment conditions – winning or losing a set – despite similar ability and performance. We found that among men, the winner of a closely fought tie-break had an approximate 60% chance of winning the second set, the loser a 40% chance. These effects did not exist among women, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that androgens mediate winner and loser effects. Our results may help in the design of competitions in sport as well as in work environments, where it may prove useful to either encourage winner effects or to attenuate their occasional adverse consequences.
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A Test of an Evolutionary Hypothesis of Violence against Women: The Case of Sex Ratio
Emily Stone
Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science, February 2017
Abstract:
A low sex ratio, where there are fewer men than women, has been associated with increasing rates of men’s same-sex aggression. This is surprising, given the relative surplus of mates and presumably lowered mate competition in low sex ratio societies. Two competing hypotheses — a “culture of violence” hypothesis and a functional, evolutionary hypothesis — may account for this finding. The current research tests which of these hypotheses explains another facet of men’s aggression — violence against women. Correlations supported an evolutionary perspective of violence against women: higher sex ratio societies, where women are scarce, were significantly more likely to be tolerant toward rape and were significantly more likely to aggress against wives. These results suggest refinement of a culture of violence perspective. They also replicate and extend previous research on sex ratio imbalances and men’s aggression toward women.
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Whitney DeCamp & Christopher Ferguson
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, February 2017, Pages 388–400
Abstract:
Despite decades of study, no scholarly consensus has emerged regarding whether violent video games contribute to youth violence. Some skeptics contend that small correlations between violent game play and violence-related outcomes may be due to other factors, which include a wide range of possible effects from gender, mental health, and social influences. The current study examines this issue with a large and diverse (49 % white, 21 % black, 18 % Hispanic, and 12 % other or mixed race/ethnicity; 51 % female) sample of youth in eighth (n = 5133) and eleventh grade (n = 3886). Models examining video game play and violence-related outcomes without any controls tended to return small, but statistically significant relationships between violent games and violence-related outcomes. However, once other predictors were included in the models and once propensity scores were used to control for an underlying propensity for choosing or being allowed to play violent video games, these relationships vanished, became inverse, or were reduced to trivial effect sizes. These results offer further support to the conclusion that video game violence is not a meaningful predictor of youth violence and, instead, support the conclusion that family and social variables are more influential factors.
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An Examination of the Sibling Training Hypothesis for Disruptive Behavior in Early Childhood
Ella Daniel, André Plamondon & Jennifer Jenkins
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sibling training for disruptive behavior (one sibling teaching another disruptive behavior) is examined during early childhood. We used a conservative, recently developed, statistical model to identify sibling training. Sibling training was operationalized as the cross-lagged association between earlier child behavior and later sibling behavior, and differentiated from other reasons that contribute to sibling similarity. A three-wave longitudinal study tracked 916 children (Mage = 3.46, SD = 2.23) in 397 families using multi-informant data. Evidence for sibling training was found. Earlier younger siblings’ disruptive behavior predicted later lower levels of older siblings’ disruptive behavior. Thus, the sibling training found in early childhood was producing greater dissimilarity, rather than similarity, on disruptive behavior.
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Preemptive strikes: Fear, hope, and defensive aggression
Nir Halevy
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, February 2017, Pages 224-237
Abstract:
Preemptive strikes are costly and harmful. Existing models of defensive aggression focus narrowly on the role fear plays in motivating preemptive strikes. Theoretically integrating the literatures on conflict, decision making, and emotion, the current research investigated how specific emotions associated with certainty or uncertainty, including fear, anger, disgust, hope, and happiness, influence preemptive strikes. Study 1 demonstrated that hope negatively predicts defensive exits from relationships in choice dilemmas. Studies 2 and 3 experimentally manipulated risk of being attacked in an incentivized, interactive decision making task — the Preemptive Strike Game. Risk of being attacked fueled preemptive strikes; reduced feelings of hope partially mediated this effect in Study 3. Studies 4 and 5 investigated preemptive strikes under uncertainty (rather than risk). In Study 4, reasoning about the factors that make one trustful of others curbed preemptive strikes; cogitating about the factors that underlie discrete emotions, however, did not influence defensive aggression. Study 5 demonstrated that the valence and uncertainty appraisals of incidental emotions interact in shaping preemptive strikes. Specifically, recalling an autobiographical emotional experience that produced hope significantly decreased attack rates relative to fear, happiness, and a control condition. Fear, anger, disgust, and happiness were either unrelated to preemptive strikes or showed inconsistent relationships with preemptive strikes across the 5 studies. These findings shed light on how emotions shape defensive aggression, advance knowledge on strategic choice under risk and uncertainty, and demonstrate hope’s positive effects on social interactions and relationships.