| Intergroup conflict refers the explicit or implicit against behavior among different social groups rather than individuals. Highly-identified group members think that the intergroup conflict is much stronger. The researchers also explored the social and psychological reasons, forms and influence of intergroup conflict. Socioeconomic status (SES) is measured by income and occupation or educational attainment. The gap between rich and poor is much deeper in China, and the conflict between rich and poor is intense (Sun,2007). So it is important to research the intergroup conflict between high and low SES group. The extant literature has documented some relationships between SES and behavioral indicators of aggression. Barefoot et al., (1991) and Lynch et al., (1997) found the association between SES (including education, income and occupation) and hostility suggest a linear, inverse relationship. The relationship between SES and aggressive responses has been demonstrated using methods such as questionnaires or behavior experiments. But in our country, the relationship between SES and aggression is affected by social desirability effects, and the research results can’t reflect the real condition. So we used the implicit cognition and ERP technology to explore the intergroup conflict between high or low SES group. In addition, this research also considered the influence of group identity in intergroup conflict. In this study we focused on people who highly-identified their high or low SES.Using subliminal priming procedure and choice RT task, the present study investigated the aggression of high or low SES group among highly-identified group members by recording both behavioral and EPR data elicited by story and aggressive images which were taken as the core of aggression. There are three experiments in the study. Using the aggressive words and neutral words as the subliminal priming words among high or low SES group, the 57 subjects were recorded the aggressive judgment to the high status, low status and control group in the first experiment. The results showed the aggression to outgroup are significant higher than ingroup in high SES group. The aggression to outgroup and ingroup is significant higher than control group in low SES group. The aggression to low and high status is significant higher than control condition in the subliminal aggressive priming. And the aggression to low status is significant higher than high status and control condition in the subliminal neutral priming.In the second experiment, event-related brain potentials were recorded to investigate electrophysiological correlates of aggression in high and low SES groups, recording the response of 34 subjects, who responded to violent and nonviolent images. ERP data showed that violent images elicited a smaller N2 deflection than did nonviolent images in both high and low SES groups. These findings suggest that participants may be less able to deploy cognitive resources to control responses to the aggressive information. For the N2 latency we observed that a longer N2 latency in low SES compared to high SES group. It is suggested that low SES group is much slowed responses in detecting response conflicts to both image types, In addition, the low SES group exhibited significantly smaller P3 amplitudes to violent images, implying a reduction in brain activity known to reflect activation of the aversive motivational system. Low SES group seem to display similar psychophysiological responses to individuals high in aggression.In the third experiment, event-related brain potentials were recorded to investigate electrophysiological correlates of aggression in high and low SES groups, recording the response of 26 subjects, who responded to attacker images and victims of attacker images. The results showed low SES group elicited smaller LPC than high SES group, which suggested that the memory retrieval of low SES group is worse to violent images than nonviolent images, and put less attention resources. |
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