Retaliation to personalistic attack

Abstract

Jones and Davis's [1965. Advances in experimental social psychology. Academic Press] notion of "personalism" was experimentally tested in a situation in which behavior had negative hedonic relevance for the recipient. It was hypothesized that (1) if a person is attacked by another person, this victim will react more negatively than when no attack occurs and that (2) a victim who is singled out for attack will react more negatively compared with victims of an undistinctive attack (i.e., when the actor behaves similarly toward the victim and a third person). A 2 ´ 2 design was employed with "Victim of attack" as the first factor (no attack vs. attack) and "Behaviour toward a third person" as the second factor (no attack vs. attack). The main dependent variable was the number of attacks by the victim toward the attacker (retaliation). Thirty-two students took part in the experiment. Victims of attack retaliated more against the attacker than those who suffered from no attack. Victims of a personalistic attack retaliated more than victims of an undistinctive attack. The results, confirming both hypotheses, support an attributional view on harm-doing and contradict the notion of retaliation as pure behavioral reciprocity. Aggr. Behav. 25:91-96, 1999.

Smile when you say that: Effects of willingness on dispositional inferences

“…If one were receiving the help, would the amount of help be more important than the helper's willingness? Although the concepts of personalism (i.e., when we perceive actions to be directed toward us) and hedonic relevance (i.e., whether someone's actions make us feel good or bad) were introduced in the early days of attribution theory (Jones & Davis, 1965; see also Jones, 1990), comparatively little research has addressed them (e.g., DeRidder, Schruijer, & Rijsman, 1999;Enzle, Harvey, & Wright, 1980;Jones & deCharms, 1957). One might also wonder how employers, who may be primarily interested in productivity, would view two workers, one of whom has an unwilling attitude but accomplishes a great deal, and another who has a willing attitude but accomplishes less.…”

A Typology of Street Criminal Retaliation

“…When retaliation is examined in its own right, its situated composition is less important than the factors that mediate the availability of law (Black 1983;Horwitz 1990). Retaliation is represented more broadly in studies of formal organizations (Rothschild and Miethe 1999), gender (Schnake et al 1997), children (Herzberger and Hall 1993), domestic violence (Marleau and Hamilton 1999), racism (Craig 1999), terrorism (Brophy-Baermann and Conybeare 1994), and experimental psychology (see, e.g., DeRidder et al 1999;Kim et al 1998). But its structure, process, and contingent forms remain poorly understood.…”

Understanding the aggressive workplace: Development of the workplace aggression tolerance questionnaire

“…While no physical harm is inflicted, communicative-based workplace aggression is still harmful as it can damage the psyche, work relationships, employee performance, and turnover (Bensimon, 1997;Geddes & Baron, 1997;Incivility, 2000;Kinney, 1994;Top threat, 2001). Tolerance of verbal aggression may even be a precursor to more extreme behaviors like forms of physical violence (Andersson & Pearson, 1999;DeRidder, Schruijer, & Rijsman, 1999). An understanding of organization members' perceptions of the appropriateness (or acceptability) of various forms of workplace aggression is central to managers' and researchers' attempts to assess and reduce the problem.…”