Abstract
Interpersonal provocation presents an approach-avoidance conflict to the provoked person: responding aggressively might yield the joy of retribution, whereas withdrawal can provide safety. Experimental aggression studies typically measure only retaliation intensity, neglecting whether individuals want to confront the provocateur at all. To overcome this shortcoming of previous measures, we developed and validated the Fight-or-Escape paradigm (FOE). The FOE is a competitive reaction time (RT) task in which the winner can choose the volume of a sound blast to be directed at his/her opponent. Participants face two ostensible opponents who consistently select either high or low punishments. At the beginning of each trial, subjects are given the chance to avoid the encounter for a limited number of times. In a first experiment (n = 27, all women), we found that fear potentiation (FP) of the startle response was related to lower scores in a composite measure of aggression and avoidance against the provoking opponent. In a second experiment (n = 34, 13 men), we altered the paradigm such that participants faced the opponents in alternating rather than in random order. Participants completed the FOE as well as the Dot-Probe Task (DPT) and the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT). Subjects with higher approach bias scores in the AAT avoided the provoking opponent less frequently. Hence, individuals with high threat reactivity and low approach motivation displayed more avoidant responses to provocation, whereas participants high in approach motivation were more likely to engage in aggressive interactions when provoked. The FOE is thus a promising laboratory measure of avoidance and aggression.
Highlights
Aggressive behavior is a great challenge to individuals and to society
Instead of the expected relationship between an avoidant bias for angry faces and avoidance in the Fight-or-Escape paradigm (FOE), we found that participants with high approach scores towards happy faces engaged in more aggressive encounters in high provocation trials
We showed that reactivity to threat as measured by fear potentiation (FP) relates to reduced aggression and avoidance, and that participants with stronger approach tendencies towards positive stimuli more frequently chose to engage in an aggressive interaction than participants who tended to avoid positive stimuli
Summary
Aggressive behavior is a great challenge to individuals and to society. It is not surprising that research on aggression has been conducted for decades and continues to be an important problem addressed by scientific experiments today (Anderson and Bushman, 1997). This showed the proposed negative relationship between FP and aggression and supports our previous argument that the lack of an avoidance option in the TAP reduces interpersonal variability in aggression, as it imposes an unnatural limitation of behavioral options upon the participant. Using stimuli that typically elicit approach or avoidance tendencies, congruency effects can be observed: participants are faster in pushing away stimuli that elicit avoidance tendencies than they are at pulling them close, whereas the opposite effect is observed for approach-related stimuli This has been found for social stimuli as angry and happy faces (Roelofs et al, 2005), as well as other affective stimuli, as pictures of spiders in participants high in fear of spiders (Rinck and Becker, 2007).
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