Harming In Order To Help: An Empirical Characterization of Prosocial Aggression

People sometimes inflict harm to help others, but a systematic study is lacking into aggression that is motivated by the desire to help the very target of that aggression. Across six studies, we empirically examined the nature of such prosocial aggression (total N = 1,527). Many participants believed in the existence of prosocial aggression, a belief that was simultaneously associated with both antisocial and prosocial traits. Participants also exhibited a modest self-serving bias in which they believed that their aggression was more prosocially-motivated than others’ aggression. Translating these beliefs to reality, participants were often prosocially-aggressive -- inflicting more harm when their aggression could also help (versus only hurt) the target. Prosocial aggression was elevated towards nice (versus mean) people, robust to whether it was personally costly or not, and sensitive to both the amount of harm it inflicted and help it conferred. It was unassociated with most social traits we assessed, excepting a modest positive association with trait aggression, suggesting that it is ‘true’ aggression but does not neatly map onto agreeable or antagonistic personality. Our findings characterize a novel aggression phenotype, articulate a theoretical space for it, and highlight the need to better understand how people inflict harm in their attempts to help

Revisiting the Neurocognitive Correlates of the Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Systems

The Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) are cornerstones of neurobehavioral research. Personality scales have been developed to capture the behavioral and motivational tendencies associated with these systems, and many studies have attempted to link these scales with basic neurocognitive processes. The results, however, have been inconclusive. Here, we aim to replicate a seminal study on this topic by Amodio et al. (2008), in which the authors used a Go/No-Go task to test the association of the trait BIS with cognitive control and the BAS trait with approach tendency. The authors found significant correlations that were mutually exclusive from each other; BAS did not correlate with measures of cognitive control, and BIS did not correlated with measures of approach tendency. Despite the paper’s high citation frequency and influence on the field, there has been no direct replication to date. These factors motivated the inclusion of this study in the #EEGManyLabs project, an international community-driven effort to replicate influential EEG results and this registered report forms a part of this initiative. Following the original study, a Go/No-Go experiment will be performed with a total of 320 participants across eight replicating labs. EEG will be recorded both during the experiment and in an eight-minute resting period. Target variables are the amplitude of the N2 during a successfully inhibited response, the amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN) after an erroneous response, left frontal asymmetry (LFA) during rest, and trait BIS/BAS measured by the Carver and White questionnaire. Both Pearson’s and Spearman rank sum correlations, as well as regression analyses will be used to test the hypotheses that trait BIS is associated with ERN and N2 amplitudes, and that trait BAS is associated with LFA during rest

A multilab replication of the induced-compliance paradigm of cognitive dissonance

According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by changing their attitude to be in line with their behavior. One of the most popular experimental paradigms used to produce such attitude change is the induced-compliance paradigm. Despite its popularity, the replication crisis in social psychology and other fields, as well as methodological limitations associated with the paradigm, raise concerns about the robustness of classic studies in this literature. We therefore conducted a multilab constructive replication of the induced-compliance paradigm based on Croyle and Cooper (Experiment 1). In a total of 39 labs from 19 countries and 14 languages, participants (N = 4,898) were assigned to one of three conditions: writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice, writing a counterattitudinal essay under low choice, or writing a neutral essay under high choice. The primary analyses failed to support the core hypothesis: No significant difference in attitude was observed after writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice compared with low choice. However, we did observe a significant difference in attitude after writing a counterattitudinal essay compared with writing a neutral essay. Secondary analyses revealed the pattern of results to be robust to data exclusions, lab variability, and attitude assessment. Additional exploratory analyses were conducted to test predictions from cognitive-dissonance theory. Overall, the results call into question whether the induced-compliance paradigm provides robust evidence for cognitive dissonance

A Multilab Replication of the Induced-Compliance Paradigm of Cognitive Dissonance

According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by changing their attitude to be in line with their behavior. One of the most popular experimental paradigms used to produce such attitude change is the induced-compliance paradigm. Despite its popularity, the replication crisis in social psychology and other fields, as well as methodological limitations associated with the paradigm, raise concerns about the robustness of classic studies in this literature. We therefore conducted a multilab constructive replication of the induced-compliance paradigm based on Croyle and Cooper (Experiment 1). In a total of 39 labs from 19 countries and 14 languages, participants (N = 4,898) were assigned to one of three conditions: writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice, writing a counterattitudinal essay under low choice, or writing a neutral essay under high choice. The primary analyses failed to support the core hypothesis: No significant difference in attitude was observed after writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice compared with low choice. However, we did observe a significant difference in attitude after writing a counterattitudinal essay compared with writing a neutral essay. Secondary analyses revealed the pattern of results to be robust to data exclusions, lab variability, and attitude assessment. Additional exploratory analyses were conducted to test predictions from cognitive-dissonancetheory. Overall, the results call into question whether the induced-compliance paradigm provides robust evidence for cognitive dissonance