Exploring The Social Psychological Mechanism Behind "LALI-MAMI"

"Less attack for the less intimate,more attack for the more intimate"(LALI-MAMI)refers to the social phenomenon where an individual tends to conflict with more intimate persons than with less intimate persons.This behavior is seemingly irregular yet common,but the reasons and psychological mechanism behind the behavior lack of researches.Previous researches have shown that interest greatly influences interpersonal behavior,but they do not discuss the influence of different interests on interpersonal conflict.They have also demonstrated the impact of the sense of security and interpersonal distance over interpersonal conflict.However,these work only studied how interest,sense of security and interpersonal distance separately relate with interpersonal conflict,and the psychological mechanism behind the combined effect of these three factors has not been explored.This paper analyzes how interest,the sense of security and interpersonal distance jointly result in interpersonal conflicts,and explores the social psychological mechanism behind "LALI-MAMI".Specifically,I survey 203 college students with questionnaires designed according to Pound's theory of interest classification and related mature scale.The main results after analyzing the collected data are as follows:Firstly,for college students,the conflict with intimate persons is stronger than with stranger,that is,the phenomenon of "LALI-MAMI" truly exists.And the data shows that "LALI-MAMI" is not affected by the gender,whether he or she is the only child and his or her hometown is in city or countryside.Secondly,interpersonal distance has an impact on the sense of interpersonal security.To be more specific,the sense of interpersonal security with intimate persons is significantly higher than with less intimate ones.Thirdly,the interest also has an impact on interpersonal conflict;and the personality interest can lead to stronger conflict than the material interest.In general,there is a significant positive correlation between the interest and the interpersonal conflict,and the correlation coefficient is greater than 0.8 regardless of interpersonal distance.When it comes to big interest,the interpersonal conflict is not affected by the sense interpersonal security,whether it has a high sense of security or not,there will be a strong conflict.While for small interest,the higher the sense of interpersonal security,the stronger the conflict.To sum up,the closer the interpersonal distance,the higher the sense of security.And higher sense of interpersonal security lead to stronger interpersonal conflict only when the interest is small.Therefore,"LALI-MAMI" only exists in the situation of small interest.That is,when the interest is small,the interpersonal conflict with more intimate persons who bring higher sense of security becomes stronger.Based on the empirical analysis of interpersonal distance,interpersonal security,interest and conflict,this paper explores the psychological mechanism behind "LALI-MAMI" from theoretical perspectives,and uses the theory of social exchange and the theory of hierarchical needs to explain the "LALI-MAMI" phenomenon.Based on the conclusions,this paper also analyzes the cases of LALI-MAMI among college students,and puts forward three suggestions to them:respect other's personality,handle interpersonal conflict rationally,hoping to impove their social skills.