Provocation, Gender, and Status: Maintaining Convictions in the Face of Provocation

Abstract

Provocation has been shown to induce various reactions, including aggression, fear, and change in mood, among others. Differences in these reactions, while explained in the literature in various ways, have often been broadly defined in terms of participant gender, with males leaning towards aggressiveness and females towards passivity (Amantullah & Morris, 2010; Byrnes, Miller, Schafer, 1999; Hollandsworth & Wall, 1977; Twenge, 2001). It has also been shown that many hold different perceptions of and feelings towards same status, higher status, and lower status individuals, thus reacting differently to these two groups. The current research expands on this notion of gender- and status- influenced reactions to provocation by measuring the effects that manipulating these two variables has on a new dependent measure: value maintenance. When provoked by individuals of either same, lower, higher status, or of same or different gender, will participants’ value ratings change? Through manipulating these two variables, it is predicted that the gender of the participant, the gender of the instigator, and the status of the instigator will mediate changes in the ways participants rate the strength of their convictions in the face of provocation.