Impression Management and the Escalation of Aggression and Violence

Abstract

Impression management theory is used to derive hypotheses about the escalation of incidents involving aggression and violence among samples of the general population, ex-mental patients, and ex-criminal offenders. Respondents were interviewed about incidents they had been involved in at four levels of severity: incidents in which they were angry but did nothing about it; verbal disputes; incidents involving physical violence but no weapon; and incidents in which a weapon was used. The findings generally support impression management theory: (I) respondents were more likely to express their anger when they had been insulted, particularly when they were males; (2) the probability of physical violence was lower when participants gave accounts for their actions; (3) conflicts involving same-sex participants were generally more severe when an audience was present; and (4) instigation from third parties resulted in more severe incidents while third party mediation resulted in less subsequent aggression.