Davis James R, Reyna Christine
Chicago State University, Illinois, USA.
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2015 Dec;54(4):728-47. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12109. Epub 2015 May 14.
Within social hierarchies, low social status is associated with increased vigilance, hostile expectations, and reactive aggression. We propose that societal devaluation is common across many low social status groups and produces a sense of threatened social worth. Threatened social worth may lead those of low status to be more vigilant towards social threats, thereby increasing the likelihood of hostile attributions and endorsement of aggression. Integrating theory on belongingness, social rejection, and stigma compensation, two studies test a sequential process model demonstrating that threatened social worth mediates the relationship between status, hostile attributions, and endorsement of aggression. Employing a relative status manipulation, Study 2 reveals a causal effect of status and highlights the importance of perceptions of low social status on threatened social worth. These data demonstrate the role of social worth in explaining the link between status and hostility and have implications for research in the social, health, and developmental domains.
在社会等级制度中，社会地位较低与警惕性增强、怀有敌意的预期以及反应性攻击行为相关联。我们提出，社会贬低在许多社会地位较低的群体中很常见，并会产生一种社会价值受到威胁的感觉。受到威胁的社会价值可能会导致地位较低的人对社会威胁更加警惕，从而增加怀有敌意的归因和对攻击行为认可的可能性。结合关于归属感、社会排斥和污名补偿的理论，两项研究检验了一个顺序过程模型，该模型表明受到威胁的社会价值在地位、怀有敌意的归因和对攻击行为的认可之间的关系中起中介作用。研究2采用相对地位操纵，揭示了地位的因果效应，并突出了低社会地位认知对受到威胁的社会价值的重要性。这些数据证明了社会价值在解释地位与敌意之间联系方面的作用，并对社会、健康和发展领域的研究具有启示意义。
