Attraction and Hostility

An Experimental Analysis of Interpersonal and Self Evaluation

Anton Pelinka, Albert Pepitone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351315302
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Attraction and hostility find expression in almost every variety of human relationship, and have consequently provided a central theme for social psychology since its beginnings. Yet attempts to conceptualize the diverse phenomena embraced in these terms have produced theories of such wide generality that they have little explanatory or predictive force. The object of the present study is to bring precision to a vast and sprawling area by setting limits and dimensions to the phenomena and investigating them experimentally on the basis of a series of hypotheses derived from a critical analysis of current conceptual approaches, including frustration, need-satisfaction, and dissonance models.

The programme of experimental studies focuses on cognitive validation-a motivation to form and maintain subjectively valid evaluations of the self and the social environment-which is shown to be a common denominator of a number of attraction and hostility measures. The results throw light on reactions to boastfulness and to self-debasement; impressions of persons who are described by biased informants; effects of self-evaluation on competitiveness, and the projection of unfavourable characteristics.

The interest of the study for social psychologists derives both from its theoretical integration of a wide range of behaviour and from its contribution to experimental design.

I Theoretical
Considerations

Introduction to Part I

Attraction and hostility in a bewildering variety of forms seem to characterize every kind of human relationship. A man denounces his neighbor, a worker praises his foreman, a diplomat writes a negative evaluation of his assigned country, a husband and wife call each other vile names, union and management leaders excoriate the mediator, a boy and girl declare their mutual love, and an angry crowd threatens an integration leader.

It is generally agreed that such phenomena should be explained and made predictable by the behavioral sciences, but it is also inescapably clear that no theories, at present, can do the job. Perhaps one reason for the slow progress in the accumulation of precise knowledge is that theories have become so over-generalized that they cannot easily be rejected. In attempting to encompass a maximum range and diversity of data, concepts have had to be defined at rarefied levels of abstraction. As a result, flatly contradictory data are hard to come by. For instance, a cumulative look at the behavioral-science literature might well lead one to suppose that war, suicide, marital discord, juvenile delinquency, crowd hysteria, and many other phenomena are the direct consequences of “frustration.” Although manifestly an oversimplified explanation, the concept of frustration has persisted tenaciously. Indeed, because of its apparent generality, the concept exudes an aura of scientific power and invincibility which has made it preferred to less abstract interpretations.

Furthermore, even though most prevailing theories are too general, their applications do not consistently range over the same domain of data. This means that rigorous comparisons as to their adequacy in handling given phenomena become difficult. For example, although intergroup and interpersonal hostility have not been neglected altogether, the group-dynamics approach to social psychology has been more concerned with the causes and consequences of interpersonal attraction. Individually oriented social psychology, on the other hand, has emphasized the study of aggression virtually to the exclusion of the attraction sector. The question arises—are there laws of aggression which are different from laws of interpersonal attraction, or can a single conceptualization cover both areas? To outline an answer to this question and to formulate the problem with which our experimental studies in Part II will be concerned, it will be useful to examine in some detail how the data of attraction and hostility have been conceptualized and explained by the major systematic approaches.

Chapter I examines the interpretations of group cohesiveness and individual aggression which, at least implicitly, are based upon highly general need-satisfaction or need-frustration models. Also considered within the satisfaction-frustration framework are interpretations of attraction and hostility data in terms of specific motivations, such as the need for status and security. In Chapter 2, several cognitive-consistency models which are relevant to attraction and hostility, including balance, congruity, and dissonance models, are described and evaluated in detail. Finally, Chapter 3 analyzes a large variety of social behaviors which have been interpreted in terms of a specific cognitive motive or mechanism.

This survey of background theory strongly suggests that much of what lies in the vast and sprawling area of attraction and hostility can be interpreted as the reflection of a need in the individual to maintain a valid cognitive structure with respect to the valuation of himself and others. The experiments which form Part II of this book are devoted to testing the role and ramifications of this “cognitive-validation” need in a variety of attraction- and hostility-generating situations.

1 Need-Satisfaction
and -Frustration Models

Of all the systematic approaches to social psychology, group psychology has concerned itself most directly with the data of interpersonal attraction. This approach conceptualizes attraction in terms of group cohesiveness. The esprit of military units, the morale of work groups, the level of community integration, the solidarity of the political left or right, the tight code of the underworld mob—these are all summarized by the term cohesiveness. Appropriate to this focus on group phenomena is the conceptual definition of cohesiveness which, according to Cart-wright and Zander (1960), is “the resultant of all the forces acting on all the members to belong to the group” (p. 74). Although such a quantity exists only when a group exists, it is, as the definition implies, ultimately decomposable into the attractions which individuals have for the group. Indeed, the operational measures of cohesiveness most frequently used in research are based directly on individual acts and attitudes. A common index of cohesiveness is, for example, the frequency of “sociometric” choices—choices of friends or work partners made by individual group members among other group members or persons outside the group.

Although research applications of group cohesiveness have not dealt explicitly with the attraction of the individual for himself, such an aspect is implicit. If the individual is attracted to the group, it is not unreasonable to assume that, as a group member, some of the attraction is to himself. Presumably, to some extent, the conditions which affect the cohesiveness of the group affect the attitudes of the individual members toward themselves.

According to the group-dynamics conceptualization, the explanation of attraction is based both upon the needs of the individual and the characteristics of the group. Thus, if any motivation of an individual group member is held constant, his attraction to the group would theoretically vary with the amount of need satisfaction which the group can directly or indirectly mediate. The stronger the need which the group can satisfy, the greater the attraction. It has been customary to differentiate the various sources of need satisfaction provided by the group. The following classification is typical: Individuals are attracted to groups (or resist leaving them) because of the satisfactions derived from personal affiliation as such, because of the prestige gained through membership, because of the satisfactions provided by the group’s achievement of its goals, or even more generally, because of the instrumental capacity of the group to mediate various social and nonsocial goals.

The need-satisfaction theory of cohesiveness has been stated at an extremely high level of generality and, thus, has the potential of great integrating power. From an empirical point of view, however, it is surely not known whether all social and nonsocial needs increase interpersonal attraction when satisfied by the group. Moreover, nothing in the formula predicts the particular kinds of behaviors and conditions which are need-satisfying or the particular behaviors which reflect cohesiveness. As most often stated, the specific forms of attraction actually measured—for example, sociometric choices—are conceived to be automatic reactions following need satisfaction; they play no special role in bringing about the satisfaction and are not any more predictable than other reflectors of cohesiveness. It would seem that, for understanding the dynamics of cohesiveness and for making detailed predictions, the need-satisfaction model is far too abstract and far too much in advance of available empirical information.

Drive Frustration and Individual Hostility

Quite possibly because of psychoanalytic influence, individual psychology has concentrated more on the phenomena of interpersonal hostility. Most of the experimental work has been concerned with various overt aggressive behaviors, including wholly verbal forms, as well as various physical actions and gestures.

The major conceptualization in the area of hostility has clearly been the frustration-aggression hypothesis (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). Indeed, the thinking about hostility has been all but dominated by this formulation. The basic statement of the hypothesis is simple: Frustration is a condition or event which prevents the occurrence of a goal-directed act. Frustration results in an instigation to aggression, and, if there is no inhibition to prevent it, the instigation results in an overt aggressive response. Conceptually, the goal of aggression is to injure the party at whom it is directed. When this goal has been achieved, the instigation to aggression is reduced. The greater the drive the response to which is frustrated, the greater the tendency toward aggression. Hostility toward the self can be understood either as an extreme, 180-degree displacement when the aggressive response toward the frustrator is inhibited or as a direct response to oneself as the frustrator.

Like the need-satisfaction theory of attraction, the frustration-aggression hypothesis is extraordinarily general. In the way it was originally stated, no distinctions whatever were demanded as to the nature of the interference or the nature of the drive the satisfaction of which is interfered with. A large variety of “blocks” have been used in research bearing on frustration-aggression; they include delays in obtaining rewards, motivational conflicts which prevent gratification, economic depression, failure to complete a task or to complete it successfully, being insulted, being kept up all night, and so on. However, existing experimental evidence is not sufficiently refined to show that it is the blocking characteristic as such which is responsible for the aggression. Moreover, there is more than a casual indication that some blocks do not produce any aggression at all or do so only under special conditions. According to everyday observation, at least, a physical obstruction or intellectual problem which blocks the progress of an individual often appears to produce a “reorganization,” whereby the individual abandons his original goal and tries some other solution or tries to circumvent the barrier without palpable aggression. In animal studies, the partial-reinforcement technique, in which the reward is delivered on fewer than 100 per cent of the trials, can be interpreted as a frustration relative to the situation of 100 per cent reinforcement. Yet the consequences of such frustration, which include strengthened response tendencies and greater persistence under conditions of no reward, do not resemble anything like hostility.

Cognitive factors have been tied to the frustration model at a number of points. In the original formulation, for example, it was assumed that, as a goal response, aggression was directed toward injuring the source of the frustration. Presumably, a cognitive process is involved here in the location of the source of frustration. Cognition also plays a role in determining the amount of aggression. Pastore (1952) administered a questionnaire containing a number of hypothetical frustrations which the subjects were to assume happened to them. In one experimental condition, the frustrations were described as “arbitrary” (“You’re waiting on the right corner for a bus, and the driver intentionally passes you by”), whereas in a comparison condition, the same frustrations were phrased in a nonarbitrary fashion (“You’re waiting on the right corner for the bus, when you notice that it is the Special on its way to the garage”). Significantly stronger aggressive reactions were found when the frustration was arbitrary. Of course, the nonarbitrary frustration evoked some aggressive responses, so it cannot be said that arbitrariness is a necessary condition for aggression. Indeed, the conceptual status of the arbitrariness variable is not altogether clear. It has been argued (Rothaus & Worchel, 1960) that it is not arbitrariness which increases the aggression; rather, non-arbitrariness inhibits the expression of aggression. In support of this thesis, these investigators show that “projected” aggressive responses—estimates by the subject of how others would react to the kind of hypothetical frustrations in the questionnaire study discussed above (Pastore, 1952)—were more frequent under nonarbitrary or “reasonable” conditions than were the subject’s own aggressive responses. It may indeed be correct to assume that the subject is less inhibited when he responds projectively through someone else. But it is possible that subjects tend to think that others will perceive the situations as being less reasonable than they do and are therefore more likely to be aggressive. Arbitrariness as a determinant of aggression, in other words, cannot be unequivocally ruled out.

It has also been suggested that arbitrary frustration is essentially unexpected frustration. The disconfirmation of an expectation may be considered an additional frustration which leads to more aggression than would occur in a situation where frustration is expected (Berkowitz, 1962). This line of theoretical thinking is reflected in the interpretation of experimental results which show “contrast effects” in interpersonal evaluations (Berkowitz, 1960a, 1960b). Thus, when the subject’s expectation of receiving friendly communications from other subjects is contradicted by the receipt of critical and hostile notes, the subject’s evaluations of the other subjects are more negative than if the unfriendly behavior had been expected. This result would indeed seem to support the contention that frustrated expectations increase aggressiveness. But the same experiments show a symmetrical process at work. Subjects who expected unfriendly communications but actually received friendly communications evaluated their partners more positively than subjects who expected friendly behavior. Thus, if frustration is to apply to expectations, the concept must be expanded to predict increased liking as well as aggression, and a concept which predicts opposite behaviors without qualification would seem to have limited utility.

There is another aspect of the frustration interpretation of aggression which should be considered. As already mentioned, the occurrence of aggression, if it meets the criterion of a goal response, reduces the instigation to further aggression. This temporary decrease in aggressiveness is one form of what has been called the “catharsis effect.” The unequivocal occurrence of catharsis has been difficult to demonstrate empirically, however. Typically, a reduction in aggressiveness following the expression of aggression can be explained by one or more alternative processes. In some experimental designs, one such alternative is provided by the frustration-aggression hypothesis itself: When the setup imposes a condition in which aggression is prevented, that is, frustrated, there should be increased subsequent aggressiveness. Now, when such a condition is compared with one in which aggression is freely permitted, no assumption about catharsis is needed to explain the existence of relatively less aggressiveness following its overt expression in the latter condition (Thibaut & Coules, 1952). Another alternative stressed by several writers in recent years (for example, Berkowitz, 1958) is that the expression of hostility sometimes constitutes a transgression which leads to guilt reactions. It may readily be supposed that the curtailment of aggressiveness represents one form of guilt reaction.

Formally speaking, in the drive-frustration model, the instigation to aggression is an automatic reaction. Just as a metabolic deficit leads to internal homeostatic responses which restore the equilibrium level or “steady state,” frustration sets off aggressive responses which reduce the aggressive impulse. Unspecified, however, is the way in which injury of some kind, inflicted on an instigator, accomplishes this reduction. Such lack of specificity is especially troublesome since the aggression does not necessarily remove the frustration. In addition, the nature of the “block” requires analysis, as do the motivations that are blocked. Finally, more attention should be focused on the question: What is aggression? The formal definition of aggression—behavior which has injury as its aim—is notoriously question-begging and difficult to measure.

Social Motives as Determinants of Attraction

The foregoing analysis shows that the theoretical approaches to attraction and hostility by group and individual psychology are essentially based on a highly general model of need satisfaction or need frustration. For making detailed and precise predictions, however, a number of questions have to be answered: Which needs produce attractiveness when satisfied and hostility when frustrated? What particular conditions and behaviors are satisfying or frustrating? How are given forms of attraction and aggression produced when there is satisfaction or frustration of given motivations? Which specific acts and attitudes in the field of attraction and hostility are handled by the model, and which are not?

Accordingly, rather than employing the concepts of need or drive in general, some theorists have focused on more specific social motivations for explaining attraction and hostility. Research dealing with the need for affiliation and the need for achievement has been a step in the direction of greater specificity.

French (1956), for example, showed that the choice of partners for a given task depends upon the relevance of the task to one or both of these motivations. In order to arouse affiliative needs, Air Force trainees were requested to make friendship ratings of each other. Similarly, to arouse achievement motivation, subjects were told that a test of concept formation would be taken. Measures of the relative strength of the two needs thus aroused in the individual subjects...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Tables
• Content Page
• Preface
• Part I Theoretical Considerations
• 1 Need-Satisfaction and -Frustration Models
• 2 Cognitive-Consistency Models
• 3 Cognitive Motivation in Social Behavior
• Part II Empirical Explorations
• 4 The Reaction to Boastfulness
• 5 Attraction and Legitimate Conceit
• 6 Valid Boastfulness and Invalid Self-Depreciation
• 7 The Reaction to Positive and Negative Biases
• 8 Cognitive Validation and Self-Evaluation
• 9 The Outcome of a Self-Evaluation Conflict
• 10 The Projection of Unfavorable Personality Characteristics
• 11 Self-Validation and Competitive Behavior
• 12 Recapitulation and Perspective
• Subject Index
• Named Index