Intergroup Threats Trigger Aggressive Behavior: The Moderating Role Of Intragroup Identity

In recent years,the relationship between doctors and patients has become increasingly tense,and malignant conflicts between doctors and patients also occur from time to time.Because of the asymmetry of information between doctors and patients,doctors have absolute control over them,as well as the negative news of some negative doctors,patients will feel the threat to them when they seek medical treatment.The negative emotion and cognition of the patient may lead to aggressive behavior against the group of doctors.How to mitigate the attack caused by the inter-group threat becomes an urgent problem to be solved.Previous studies have shown that individuals will automatically classify people in society,identify their own groups,and define themselves as groups,that is,individuals will recognize that they belong to a particular social group.At the same time,it also recognizes the emotion and value of being a member of the group.The inter-group threat can stimulate the negative emotion and cognition of the individual,and may lead to the attack behavior of the members of the external group.The internal group identity of the individual can influence the negative behavior of the external group caused by the inter-group threat.Therefore,this paper explores the regulatory effects of intra-group identity on attacks caused by inter-group threats through three experiments.In experiment one,based on the previous studies,the purpose of this study is to explore whether internal group identity affects aggressions caused by inter-group threats.The results showed that the level of aggression against doctors in the situation of doctor-patient conflict was significantly higher than that of individuals without group identity,which indicated that internal group identity could enhance the aggression behavior caused by inter-group threat.According to the theory of common internal group identity,when individuals redefine two originally separated groups as a common inner group in a certain dimension,the common identity can be highlighted,and the boundaries of the original internal and external groups will be weakened at this time.Individuals can reduce prejudices,discontent and hostility to the original outsider groups,and increase the degree of trust in the members of the original outsider groups.However,some studies have shown that interventions or common identities that emphasize similar or overlapping boundaries between groups may exacerbate inter-group prejudices.Therefore,in experiment 2,the influence of common internal group identity on individual aggressive behavior was discussed.The results showed that whether it was explicit aggression or implicit aggression,the level of aggression against doctors in the situation of doctor-patient conflict was significantly lower than that of individuals who only initiated the identification of patient group,while the individuals who initiated the identity of patient group and peer group at the same time had significantly lower level of aggression against doctors in the situation of doctor-patient conflict.It supports the viewpoint of the theory of common inner group identity,and when the common inner group identity is stimulated,the individual’s aggression to the original outside group will decrease.Previous studies have shown that group identity is an important social relationship,can reflect the social distance between individuals with the same group identity closer to each other.Individuals have different social distances to different groups.Experiment 3 explores the impact of community identity at different social distances on aggressions caused by inter-group threats.The results showed that there was no significant difference between the individuals who initiated the identity of the patient group and the peer group at the same time,and the individuals who initiated the identity of the patient group and the group of classmates at the same time,there was no significant difference in the explicit aggression caused by the group threat.And there is a significant difference in implicit aggressions caused by inter-group threats,The implicit aggression caused by inter-group threat was significantly less than that of the individual who initiated the identity of the patient group and the peer group at the same time,and the implicit aggression caused by the intergroup threat was significantly lower than that of the individual who initiated the identity of the patient group and the peer group.It is shown that the implicit aggression caused by the common inner group identity of closer social distance to the inter-group threat is smaller.