EVALUATION OF AGGRESSIVE INTERACTIONS IN INTERPERSONAL AND INTERGROUPCONTEXTS

The article deals with possible differences in the evaluation of inter personal and intergroup aggression, Study I investigated whether the t ypical perspective-specific divergence in judgments about aggressive i nteractions (with actors evaluating their behavior as more reasonable and less inappropriate than recipients) varied in interpersonal and in tergroup contexts, Additionally, the possible mediating influence of l ay epistemic motivation and subjective judgmental confidence was explo red. Results indicated that the social context had an important impact on the evaluation of aggressive interactions: there was a lower disse nt between actors and recipients in the intergroup than in the interpe rsonal condition, However, the direction of this pattern of data diffe red from what could be derived from theories of aggressive and intergr oup behavior, Subjective confidence and lay epistemic motivation did n ot influence the inappropriateness ratings. Study II tried to shed som e further light on the context-specific evaluation of aggressive inter action by presenting episodes of different severity and by obtaining j udgments on both actions as well as reactions, Results showed that-irr espective of severity-aggressive reactions were evaluated more negativ ely in intergroup contexts, It is proposed that this effect stemmed fr om context-specific differences in the application of the norm of reci procity. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.