The Mediating Effect of the Intervention Potential of Communications on Displaced Aggressiveness and Retaliatory Behavior

Abstract

Subjects were provoked, exposed to one of six pretested communications (audio-visual messages) differing in cognitive intervention potential, and given opportunities to aggress. The six messages represented a four-level differentiation in cognitive intervention potential: minimal, low, moderate, and high. At the moderate level, a humorous message was included with a nonhumorous one, in order to determine the effect of exposure to a message which could potentially evoke an emotional state incompatible with anger. Similarly, at the high intervention level, an aggressive message was included with a nonaggressive one to test predictions relating to the anger reiteration potential of messages with aggressive contents. Measured were: (1) changes in sympathetic excitation, (2) displaced aggressiveness, and (3) retaliatory behavior. It was found that, for nonaggressive communications, the higher the intervention potential, the greater the decrease of annoyance-produced excitation. In contrast, highly involving aggressive messages reduced excitation only to a degree comparable to that of minimally involving messages. Both displaced aggressiveness and retaliatory behavior were found to be a simple function of level of excitation. The highly involving nonaggressive communication lowered aggressive and hostile activities significantly below the level associated with exposure to either the noninvolving and nonaggressive communication or the highly involving but aggressive communication. The aggression-modifying effect of the humorous communication was as predicted from the consideration of this communication's intervention potential alone.