Let's Talk about It| Collective Rumination's Effect on Aggression

• Main Author: Taylor, Andrew R.
• Language: EN
• Published: California State University, Long Beach 2018
• Subjects: Behavioral psychology|Personality psychology
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10840250

<p> Rumination is defined as thinking about a provoking event. Previous studies had participants ruminate by themselves (i.e., engage in individual rumination), however, individuals can also experience rumination if they communally relive a provocation with others. We have termed this phenomenon &ldquo;collective rumination. Participants (<i>n</i> = 175) first completed the Revenge Planning subscale of the Displaced Aggression Questionnaire. They were then provoked, randomly assigned to either the collective rumination, individual rumination, or distraction condition, and given the opportunity to aggress. Results indicated that collective rumination produced significantly higher amounts of aggression relative to both individual rumination and distraction. This effect, however, was moderated by revenge planning. Specifically, collective rumination increased aggression for participants with low and mean levels of revenge planning but did not impact aggression for those high in revenge planning. Furthermore, there was a strong positive correlation between group cohesion and aggression for participants who collectively ruminate.</p><p>