MENS AGGRESSIONS TOWARD WOMEN IN A BUNGLED PROCEDURE PARADIGM

Males (N = 72) were provided an opportunity to shoot a pellet gun at a female confederate in the context of a novel form of male entertainme nt. Two behavioral measures of aggression were the power of the gun ch osen and the number of shots the participant elected to take. A proced ural foul-up was staged wherein an assistant had inadvertently neglect ed to assign the subject to a condition of the experiment. The oversig ht ostensibly came to light immediately after the participant announce d his decisions on the gun. A last-minute draw rectified matters and e ach participant discovered he was in the control condition. The confed erate's plea for restraint was unsuccessful in mitigating the intensit y and frequency of men's attacks. Those electing to take a greater num ber of shots scored higher on a measure of anti-social tendencies. A m ultiple regression analysis of factors predicting the attraction to su ch entertainment accounted for 59% of the variance and indicated that the overriding measure is men's expectation that the experience will b e enjoyable.