title: Physical/verbal aggression: sex differences in style.
abstract: Two studies exploring the use of physical/verbal aggression are reported, the first using women and the second using men as subjects. Both studies allowed subjects to choose between and control the intensity of two response modes: verbal aggression (insults) and physical aggression (electric shock). Aggressive style was investigated over two levels of arousal, sex of experimenter, and sex of provocateur-victim. Results indicated that women aggressed discriminatively in the verbal mode as a function of their arousal, while men were capable of aggressing discriminatively in both the verbal and physical modes. Men who had been disagreed with and punished by a female victim-provocateur in the presence of a male experimenter or by a male victim in the presence of a male experimenter demonstrated high levels of physical aggression compared to the other groups.
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D001143:Arousal; D004597:Electroshock; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D014705:Verbal Behavior