Withdrawal and Matching Strategies in Reducing Attack-Instigated Aggression

Abstract

This article reports a conceptual replication of earlier work by Dengerink and Bertilson. For a random sample of attack-instigated subjects, the use of a withdrawal strategy by an opponent is the most effective way to reduce the subject's aggression. Dengerink and Bertilson demonstrated this effect using the Taylor reaction-time procedures. The present report of similar findings used the interpersonal communications task. A matching strategy was tested in both studies but reduced aggression more slowly than the withdrawal strategy. Matching and yoked-control groups did not differ from each other during any block of testing in these two experiments. This suggests that the reduction in shock settings by subjects in the matching condition is not due to the opponent's shock settings being contingent upon the subject's shock settings. These findings are limited to randomly selected attack-instigated subjects since Pisano and Taylor reported highly aggressive subjects, who were not attacked, reduced their aggression most rapidly to a matching strategy.