Observer-Model Similarity in the Contagion of Aggression

Wheeler, Ladd; Levine, Lewis

doi:10.2307/2786437

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Most specific to the present thrust, future research needs to focus on the ways social influence principles might operate differently when an individual's preexposure public and private positions do not match. Again, the disinhibitory contagion of aggression has been found to be stronger and more likely when the model is dissimilar to the target (Baron & Kepner, 1970;Goethals & Perlstein, 1978;Wheeler & Levine, 1967) rather than similar, as is the case with conformity. However, it is not known with any degree of certainty whether this dissimilarity effect is (a) a general feature of social influence when public and private attitudes are discrepant, (b) a general feature of disinhibitory contagion, or (c) simply an idiosyncrasy of the disinhibition of aggression.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Disinhibitory contagion has been demonstrated and examined in numerous empirical studies (e.g., R, A. Baron & Kepner, 1970;Goethals & Perlstein, 1978;Levy, 1992;Russell, Wilson, & Jenkins, 1976;Wheeler & Caggiula, 1966;Wheeler & Levine, 1967;Wheeler & Smith, 1967). The Levy (1992) and Wheeler and Caggiula (1966) studies are described in some detail below.…”

Section: Disinhibitory Contagionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Three studies that investigated the disinhibitory contagion of aggression found that dissimilar models produced greater influence than similar models (R. A. Baron & Kepner, 1970;Goethals & Perlstein, 1978;Wheeler & Levine, 1967). Goethals and Perlstein (1978) offered an explanation for this pattern of results in terms of Kelley's (1967) attribution theory, the so-called triangulation effect.…”

Section: A Four-dimensional Model Of Social Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Proposal of a four-dimensional model of social response.

Nail

MacDonald²,

Levy³

2000

Psychological Bulletin

138

171

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Descriptive models of social response attempt to identify the conceptual dimensions necessary to define and distinguish various types of influence. Building on previous approaches, the authors propose a new response model and demonstrate that a minimum of 4 dimensions is necessary to adequately provide for such influence phenomena as conformity, minority influence, compliance, contagion, independence, and anticonformity in a single model. In addition, the proposed model suggests 5 potential types of response that have not been previously identified. These new types suggest directions for future research and theoretical development. Selected empirical evidence is reviewed in support of the validity and integrative power of the proposed model.

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Disinhibitory Contagionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Four-dimensional Model Of Social Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Proposal of a four-dimensional model of social response.

Nail

MacDonald²,

Levy³

2000

Psychological Bulletin

138

171

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“…Goethals (1972) found that dissimilar agreers are as influential, or more so, than similar agreers if they have the same information about the entity being judged. Wheeler and Levine (1967) have shown that a dissimilar model is more effective in inducing the contagion of aggression.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Similarity in the influence process: The belief-value distinction.

Goethals

Nelson²

1973

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

134

117

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An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that when a belief was at issue, agreement from a dissimilar other would increase judgmental confidence more than agreement from a similar other; whereas when a value was at issue, agreement from a similar other would be more influential. The subjects judged either the relative academic success of two students (belief) or which of the two they liked more (value). The subjects were given an evaluation of the students by another subject who they had been led to believe was similar or dissimilar to themselves in terms of his style of judging other people. In all cases, the evaluation subjects received agreed with their own. The results supported the predictions.

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“…One function of the morally justified violence which the subject then observed may have been the disinhibition of aggressive acts which he was motivated to commit. Such an interpretation is also suggested by studies conducted by Wheeler and his associates (Wheeler and Caggiula, 1966;Wheeler and Levine, 1967;Wheeler and Smith, 1968), in connection with their theory of behavioral contagion. According to this theory, when an individual is instigated to make a response but fails to make it because of inhibitions arising within the situation, he may become disinhibited by observing a similarly motivated person carry out the same response.…”

Section: Justification For Observed Aggressionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Some Implications of Experimental Social Psychology for the Study of Urban Disorders

Geen

1971

The Sociological Quarterly

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WHENEVER AN URBAN disorder breaks out, numerous explanations are offered for the cause of the trouble. Some theories are extremely unitary and parsimonious: the rioter is basically "criminal" and loves to destroy property, or he riots to cover basically larcenous motives, or he is a pawn in the hands of outside agitators sent by Peking, Moscow, or (in the minds of some midwesterners), New York. Other explanations are more sophisticated: the trouble lies in poor housing, job discrimination and inferior schools for black children; or, the black, seeing an affluent America all around him, feels "relatively deprived" even though his own lot may be slightly better than it formerly was (Merton and Kitt, 1950). Another explanation points out that the progress made over the past ten years in removing inequalities has led to a sense of rising expectations in the ghetto, so that failure to make continuing rapid progress toward equality is perceived as an intolerable frustration (Davirs, 1969).Each of these latter commonly held points of view implies that deprivations and injustice produce a sense of frustration which ultimately boils over into riot, and all of these ideas are related to a principle long known to psychology: that frustrations produce a build-up of tensions within individuals which may eventuate in aggression and violence. The idea, which is essentially "hydraulic" in its approach to human motivation in that it views motives as building up like water pressure, is stated in its simplest form in the works of certain neo-Frcudians (Hartmann et al., 1949) and in the frustration-aggression hypothesis of Dollard and his colleagues (Dollard et al., 1939). While having the advantage of parsimony, this principle has not been a generally good predictor of human behavior in controlled experimental settings (Kaufman, 1970) and has, in its simplest form, been largely abandoned by researchers. However, some investigators ( e.g., Berkowitz, 1969) have been reluctant to give up the frustration-aggression hypothesis entirely and have revised it and specified the intervening variables in the relationship.Although the frustration-aggression hypothesis may still have much to say on the origins of human aggression, the approach taken in this paper will be that it is not a satisfactory single explanation. As we shall see, research has uncovered some subtle and complex variables in the process, one of the more important being the presence within the situation of stimuli having some relation to aggression. The hypotheses which have guided the research to be reviewed and those which have developed as a result of it are, for the most part, untested in the "real world." They are the product of the psychological laboratory, where evi-

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Observer-Model Similarity in the Contagion of Aggression

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Proposal of a four-dimensional model of social response.

Proposal of a four-dimensional model of social response.

Similarity in the influence process: The belief-value distinction.

Some Implications of Experimental Social Psychology for the Study of Urban Disorders

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