Effects of Frustration

8/3/2019 Effects of Frustration

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AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORVolume 2 1 , pages 35S>-369 (1995)

Effects of Frustration Justification onHostiie AggressionJody C. Dill and Craig A. AndersonDepartment of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri

The p resent study tested Berkow itz' [1989: Psychological Bulletin 106:59-731 reformu -lation of the frustration-aggression hypothesis which states that any negative or aver-sive stimulus such as frustration, even if justified, will result in some measur able tendencyto aggress. Participants' attainment of an expected gratification was either blocked inan unju stified m anner, blocked in a justified mann er, or not blocked at all. Degree ofhostile aggression directed at the frustrating individual was measured. As predicted,justified frustration produced less hostile aggression than unjustified frustration, buteven justified frustration produced more hostile aggression than no frustration at all .Re sults sup por t Ber kow itz'fru strat ion-a ggr ession refor mu lation. i995Wiiey-Liss,inc.

Key wor ds: justified frustr ation, unjustified frustration, frustration-aggre ssion theor y, hostile ag-gression, attribution theory

INTRODUCTION"Forg ive and forget."T his advice consists of two com ma nds; the first is an extremelydifficult process; the latter is even more difficult, perhaps impossible. Assuming anindividual asks your forgiveness for som e transgression or frustration, you do have the

capability to comply. You may attribute the source of the harmful act to a temporarylapse, a one-time betrayal, or to some justifiable cause . Interestingly, even if you labelthe event as justified and perform the cognitive gym nastics necessary to truly forgive,can you truly forget? More specifically, can you eliminate all the hostile feelings andaction tendenc ies that were triggered by the harmful act? An an swer to the latter ques -tion may be found as a result of a relatively new insight in a theory which explore s therelationship between frustration and aggression.

Received for publication November 4, 1994; accepted February 22, 1995.Address reprint requests to Jody C. Dill, Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia,Columbia, MO 65211.


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360 Dill and AndersonOrigins of Frustration-Aggression Theory

An early attempt at a com prehen sive theory of the nature of hostility and aggressionwas a monograph by Dollard et al. [1939], in which they introduced the frustration-aggression hypoth esis. Th e theory originally stated that 1) all acts of aggression are theresult of previous frustration, and 2) all frustration leads to aggression. Frustration wasdefined as the act of blocking som eone from gaining an expected gratification; aggres-sion was defined as any behav ior w hich is intended to injure the individual to whom itis directed.

Shortly after the original theoretical statement a ppeared, a major modification to thesecond portion was offered by Miller [1941]: "Frustration produces instigations to anumber of different types of response, one of which is an instigation to some form ofaggression" (p. 338). In the 50+ years since, considerable research efforts have beendevoted to identifying various intervening processes which could reduce aggressiveresponses to frustration (e.g., response inhibition, decreased instigation, expe ctedne ss).Am ong these processe s is the degree to which the frustration is perceived as justified.The effects of justification on aggression constitute the main focus of this article.The Impact of Justification on Aggression

Pastore [1952] reported the first research which measured levels of aggression as aresult of justified or unjustified frustration. Subjects w ere presented with several hyp o-thetical scenarios which described either justifiably or unjustifiably frustrating even ts.Results showed that self-reported feelings of hostility engendered by the scenarios w eremoderated by justification. Frustration that was justified resulted in less intense feel-ings of hostil i ty than frustration that was unjustified. Cohen [1955] also reported adiminution of aggressive impulses when the source of a hypothetical frustrationwas jus t i f ied .

Weiner and colleagues, in their work on attribution theory, have provided one pos-sible explanation for the differences in aggression between justified and unjustifiedfrustrations [Weiner, 1985; W einer et al., 198 2]. Th ese resea rche rs found that su bjectswill feel anger toward an individual respo nsible for a negative event to the degree thatthe individual had control over the event. If someone has control over someone else'snega tive situation and allow s it to occur, as in unjustified frustration, anger w ill be m oreprevalent than if that individual has no control over the negative situation, as in sometypes of justified frustration.

Although the early wo rk on justification and frustration used only hypothetical sc e-narios, and thus is subject to several uninteresting altemative explanations, later re-search experimentally manipulated frustration. Of these studies, many replicated themod erating effect of justification on subsequent me asures of aggression [Bum stein andWorchel, 1962; Rule et al., 1978; Kulik and Brown, 1979]. However, as noted byBerkowitz [1988], many researchers claim that justification not only reduces the amoun tof subsequent ag gression but that justified, socially prope r sources of frustration do notcreate aggressive tendencies at all.A Reformulation of the Frustration-Aggression Theory

Berko witz [1988, 1989] clearly states that justified frustration does , indeed, lead to


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Frustration and Aggression 361views frustration as an unpleasant, aversive stimulus which evokes negative affect byautomatically eliciting cognitions that are associated with aggressive tendencies. It isimportant to repeat that this initial process is automa tic, requires little cognitive c apac -ity, and, alone, is sufficient to produ ce aggression-related thoughts and m otor im pulses.Berkowitz' model also proposes that higher order, cognitive processing (if and whensuch processing occurs) can lead the individual to attribute a cause to the unpleasantstimulus or to som e other individual. The se cognitions can prod uce adjustments to theinitial reac tions, either suppressing or enha ncing further agg ressive reaction s. This m odelhas been presented as a reformulation of the frustration-aggression hypothesis and in-cludes the following ame ndm ent: "Frustrations produce ag gressive inclinations only tothe extent that they are aversive and give rise to negative affect" [Berkow itz, 1988, p.3 ]. Furthermore, he has considered the distinction between hostile and instrumentalaggression and, in keeping w ith the original frustration-aggression hypo thesis, has fo-cused solely on hostile aggression.

During the first stages of the model, where negative affect arises and aggressivecognitions are automatically primed, some level of aggressive motivation is instigated.Through potential cognitive a ppraisals which m ay follow, justification for the frustrat-ing event can reduce the motive to aggress. However, this reappraisal may not elimi-nate all aggressive tendencies which automatically arose from the negative affectproduced by the initial frustration. Aggressive tendencies have been found to accom-pany comp letely "prop er" frustrations [unpublished manu script cited in Berko witz, 1988]and have been found to be directed at completely innocent individuals [Geen andBerkowitz, 1967; Geen, 1968; Strube et al., 1984].

Berkowitz [1981] directly tested the effects of justified and unjustified frustration onintema l and extema l aggressive reactions towa rd an innocent third party. Subjects w ereeither unjustifiably frustrated by the deliberate actions of their partner (a confederate),frustrated by justifiable equip me nt failure, or not fmstrated at all. Planned com parisonsbetw een the non-frustrated control group and the average of the two frustration cond i-tions revealed that negative, intemal reactions as measured by increases in heart rateand changes in mood resulted from frustration. N o differences we re found betw een thejustified and unjustified frustration conditions.Following the frustration manipulation, the subject was given an opportunity to re-ward and punish another individual not associated with the initial frustration. The con -nection between the individual associated with the initial frustration and the innocentindividual consisted solely in the fact that they shared the same nameGeorge. Theo-retically, the name "George" would be associated with the negative affect induced bythe initial frustration. The fact that the innocent individual's name was also "George"would link this individual to the frustration and raise his quality as a stimulus for ag-gression. Results showed that, compared to the control group, significantly more pun-ishment w as directed toward "innoce nt G eorg e" if the initial frustration was unjustified.Sub jects' outwa rdly hostile feelings for the first individual who w as most closely asso-ciated with the frustration were also measured. These reactions, which assessed thesubjects' desire for further contact with the individual, marginally increased in hostilityfrom the control group to the unjustified frustration group. No increases in overt ag-gression were found between the control and the justified frustration conditions foreither the first George or "innocent George."

An interesting yet distinct prediction from Berkowitz' [1989] model is that com-


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562 Dill and Andersonpletely justified frustration can result in increased levels of extema l agg ressive b ehav-ior directed at the fnistrator, relative to aggression produce d by a non-frustrated controlgroup. The negative affect resulting from initial frustration, even in the presence ofaggression-reducing attributions associated with justification, should be sufficient toinduce measurable amounts of overt, extemal aggression toward the individual mostclosely associated with the frustration. Berkowitz [1981] measured attitudinal aggres-sion, not behavioral aggression, toward the individual most associated with the fmstra-tion. The only direct, overt measure of behavioral aggression taken was toward theinnocent third party and revealed no significant increase from the control group to thejustified frustration group . The re is a theoretical explanation for this finding: the asso-ciative cue (i.e., the similar nam e) between the fmstrating individual and the innocen tthird party may have been too weak to stand against the aggression-reducing causalattributions made by the fmstrated subject. This is not a criticism of the design of thestudy or of the importance of its findings. On the contrary, the results of the studysupport its major predictions and made an important distinction between intemal and exter-nal reactions to frustration as a function of justification. Our point here is that there are nostudies of the hypothesis that even completely justified frustration can result in increasedovert, aggressive behavior directed at the individual m ost associated w ith the frustration.

In order to adequately test this specific prediction of Berkowitz' [1989] model, aninvestigation would need to include the following: 1) a condition where the attainmentof an expected gratification is blocked in a truly unjustified manner, 2) a conditionwhere the attainment of an expected gratification is blocked in a truly justified ma nner;3) a control condition w here the attainment of an expected gratification is not bloc ked;and 4) following the experimental manipulation, a measure of hostile aggression di-rected at the frustrating individual. We could find no study containing all four of thesespecific c haracteristics.

With the exception of one project, the relevant research in the area focuses on therelative effects of justified and unjustified frustration on aggression and does not in-clude the necessary control group [Pastore, 1952; Cohen, 1955; Kregarm an and Worchel,1961; Rule et al., 1978; Kulik and Brow n, 1979]. Bum stein and Worchel [1962] didinclude a "n o frustration" condition along with a "justified frustration" and an "unjusti-fied frustration" condition. Subjects worked on a group task which measured how wellthey could, together, com e to a conclusion on an issue. In the control group, a confeder-ate contributed moderately to the goal. In the frustration conditions, the confederateblocked the group from successfully completing the task in the designated amount oftime by asking too many clarification questions. In the "unjustified fmstra tion" condi-tion, the interruptions seem ed arbitrary, whe reas in the "justified fmstra tion" condition,the confederate wore a hearing aid and justified his questions by stating that, becausethe battery w as low, he could not hear we ll. Agg ressive inclinations toward the confed-erate, in the form of rejecting him from the group in a future, similar task, were higherin the "unjustified fmstration" condition than either the "justified fmstration" or "nofmstration" condition.

Bumstein and Worchel [1962] provided some interesting findings, but it was notdesigned to test Berkowitz' [1989] model. It should be no surprise to discover that itdoes not provide an ad equate test for several reasons (nor do we fault them for failing totest a model that had not yet been develope d). First, their primary aggression me asurewas instm me ntal in nature rather than purely hostile (i.e., rem oving the fmstrating indi-


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Frustration and Aggression 363vidual from the group to ensure success on the following task). Second, as noted inBerkowitz [1989], although one may be sensitive to a handicapped individual, manyassociate the handicapped with cognitions related to pain and suffering. Stimulatingthese cognitions may induce negative affect which may lead to pain and suffering.Stimulating these cognitions m ay induce nega tive affect which ma y lead to aggressivetendencies aside from the manipulation of frustration. Th ird, for their primary aggre s-sion measu re, no statistical compa rison w as explicitly m ade between the justified andcontrol conditions although the trend was for more aggression in the justified condi-tion. Lastly, it is not entirely clear that the justified frustration was entirely justified.'The Present Study

We conducted a more direct test of Berk ow itz' mod el. If initial aggressive tendenciesresulting from a frustrating event are cognitively m oderated by attributions of control,then frustration that is perceived as arbitrary and controllable should result in moreaggression than frustration that is perceived as nonarbitrary and uncontrollable. Fur-ther, even if justification reduces the am ount of initial aggressive tendencies that resultfrom the automatic stimulation of negative affect, it may not eliminate them. In otherwords, the conscious moderation of initial aggressive tendencies by consideration of ajustified excuse may systematically undercorrect for the automatic aggressive effectsofthe frustration. TJierefore, we proposed the following hypotheses: measures of hos-tile aggression directed at a frustrating individual will 1) be highest when the frustra-tion is unjustified; and 2) be higher in the justified frustration condition than in thenon-frustrated control condition.

METHODSubjectsThirty-six subjects participated in the study as partial fulfillment of an introductionto psychology class. Two people were dropped from the sample because they failed to

follow the necessa ry instru ction s. Th e final samp le consisted of thirty-four su bjects: 12in the unjustified frustration con dition , 13 in the justified frustration con dition , and 9 inthe unfrustrated control group.Procedure

Each experimen tal session required the use of two experimen ters, one of whom posedas a subject. This confederate randomly assigned the condition to take place in theupcoming session while the experimenter remained blind to condition. Before eachsubject arrived, the confederate took a seat in the waiting room .

'For frustration to be truly justified, i t must hav e originated from ou tside an individual (extem al) w ho w asnot able to control the event [W einer et al., 1982 ]. The confederate in Bumstein and W orchel 's paradigminitially distracted the group from their goal by asking the grou p to repeat the instructions previously statedby the experimen ter which were not audible to him. In such an instance, it would have been w ell within theindividual 's control to ask the experimenter to speak more loudly and/or repeat the instructions before theclock began counting-down on the group's allotted time. Although throughout the session the confederatedistracted the group in a more justified manner, the group's first impressions of the confederate's distrac-tion could have been viewed as unjustified.


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364 Dill and AndersonPre-experimental m easures of frustration and aggression. Each participant and

the confederate were greeted by the experim enter and led into the lab. The subject andconfederate were seated adjacent to one another at a table with the experim enter seatedfacing them from across the table. Following the informed consent pro cedure , the sub-ject and confederate com pleted an initial questionnaire which had subjects rate, amo ngother filler items, the degree to which they were at present feeling "frustrated" and"agg ressive ." Responses to each item were indicated on a scale ranging from 1 (not atall) to 11 (very).

The task. Following the questionnaire, the experimenter explained that the studytested visual-spatial ability in an instructive setting. Specifically, the subjects would beinstructed on a paper-folding (origami) task which consisted of folding a piece of paperinto a form that resem bles a bird. Subjects w ould later be timed while performing thetask alone. It was made clear that instructions would be given only once and that suc-cess on the task consisted of quickly and successfully performing the task alone afterthe instruction period.The experimenter immediately provided the subject and confederate with a piece ofpaper and began instructing them on how to perform the task. The experimenter ex-plained and demonstrated that task to the confederate and the subject, fold by fold,while they attempted to fold their papers in the same manner. The speed at which theexperimenter worked was intentionally faster than the subject could follow. At a par-ticular, predetermined fold early in the procedure the confederate interrupted, "Ex cusem e, but could you slow down a little, I 'm having a hard time keeping up with you."

Assignme nt to experimental con dition. During this interruption, the confederatemad e the experimenter aw are of the experimental condition by placing his/her hand onthe top edge of the table. If the confederate rested three fingers on the top ed ge of thetable (signaling the unjustified frustration condition) the experimenter responded, "Iwould like to hurry and get this over with. My boy/girlfriend is com ing soon to pick m eup and I do n't want to make him /her wa it." If the confederate rested two fingers on thetop edge of the table (signaling the justified frustration condition) the experimenterresponded, "My supervisor has scheduled someone else in this room very shortly andhas pressured me to do this as quickly as I can. I 'm afraid I 'm not able to slow dow n."Finally, if the confederate rested one finger on the top edge of the table (signaling thecontrol condition) the experimenter responded, "Oh, O.K., I didn't realize that I wasgoing too fast. Let me back up a little and go mo re slowly," and slowed down to a m orereasonable pace .Post-experimental measures of frustration and aggression. When the instruc-tions were completed, the confederate (conveniently seated closer to the exit than thesubject) was escorted into another lab room so that each individual cou ld perform thetask alone. Next, a piece of paper, a timing clock and an envelope entitled "Question-naire" was placed on the table in front of the subject. The subject was instructed, beforebeginning the task, to complete the questionnaires within the envelope, place themback in the envelope and bring the packet to the experimenter. As a manipulation check,this questionnaire had subjects rate the degree to which they were at present feeling"frustrated" and "aggressive" as in the pretest questionnaire. Responses to each itemwere indic ated on the sam e 11 point scale ran ging from 1 (not at all) to 11 (ve ry).

Dependent variables. An additional questionnaire was appended to the packetwhich was described as an evaluation of the university's teaching and research assis-


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Frustration and Aggression 365tants. The questionnaire stated that the feedback obtained from these questions wouldhelp the departmen t to detect those w ho deserve special merit in the form of aw ards andfinancial assistance as well as those who deserve disciplinary measures such as verbalrepriman ds and poss ible reductions in pay. Subjects were allowed to choose wh ether ornot they wanted their responses kept anonymous.

Two types of dependent variables were then collected. The first was a set of fourquestions on su bjects' specific judgm ents of and feelings about the experimenter. Th eywere as follows: t ) "The experim enter reflects an appropriate amoun t of respect towa rdothers" (labeled Respect); 2) "The experimenter has the ability to explain things in anunderstandable form" (labeled Explain); 3) "The experimenter would be a good teach-ing assistant for a psychology class" (labeled Good TA); and 4) "I like the experi-menter" (labeled Like). All four items w ere rated on a Likert-typ e scale from 1 (stronglyagree) to 5 (strongly disagree ).The Re spect and Like items represent how appropriately subjects felt they were treatedby the experimenter and, because these questions tap this same "likeability" dimensionofth e experimen ter 's behavior, were combined into an average composite score. Sub-jects in the justified frustration condition have no reason to feel less positive about theexperimenter than subjects in the control condition on this dimension. After all, theexperimenter was nice enough to explain why they had to rush so, and the reason wascomp letely justified and beyond their control. Unjustified frustration subjects, though,should give poorer (i.e., high er) ratings on these items then either justified frustrationsubjects or control subjects.The Explain and Good TA items assess a different dimension of subjects' percep-

tions of the experimenter. These questions, which measure how able or competent thesubjects' felt the experimenter to be, were also combined into an average compositescore. Becaus e subjects in the justified frustration condition exp erienced the rushedexplanation, their ratings of the experimenter on this "ability" dimension are likely tobe somewhat poorer (i.e., higher) than ratings by control subjects, but still not as pooras ratings by unjustified frustration subjects.The sec ond type of depende nt variable is more directly related to hostile ag gression.The tw o hostile aggression m easures w ere 1) a general rating of the experimen ter on ascale of 1 (horribly incompetent) to 10 (unbelievably wonderful), and 2) a "grade" ofe i therA, B,C, D , o rE .Subjects completed the questionnaire, put it back in the envelope, and contacted theexperimenter. Then they were thoroughly debriefed, given credit for their participation,and escorted from the lab.

RESULTSSelf-Reported Measures of Frustration and Aggression

Pre-experim ental levels of both frustration and aggression reve aled no group differ-ences , F 's < 1. Cha nge scores were calculated by subtracting pre-experim ental levels offrustration and aggression from post-experim ental levels of frustration and agg ression,respectively. These scores, which represent the am ount of self-reported frustration and


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366 Dill and AndersonSub |ects' Ratings of the E xperimenter

Specific measures. The two composite measureslikeabili ty and abili tyweretreated as a within subjects factor in a mixed model design. All responses were m ade ona scale of 1 to 5, with higher num bers reflecting attributions of dislike and inabilitytoward the experimenter. The resulting means for these two dimensions by experimen-tal condition can be seen in Figure 1.A 2 (dimension: "likeab ility" and "ability") x 3 (condition: unfrustrated control, jus -tified frustration, and unjustified frustration) ANOVA revealed an uninteresting maineffect for dimension, F(l,31) = 22.93, P < .0001. More importantly, the difference be-tween the tw o dimensions in the justified frustration condition w as larger than the cor-responding difference in both the unfrustrated control condition and the unjustifiedfrustration condition. The contrast testing this specific pattem of means proved reli-able, F( l ,3 1) = 4.66, P < .04. Inspection of Figu re 1 reveals that subjects in the con troland justified frustration conditions felt equal "likeability" for the experimenter; thosein the unjustified frustration condition expressed significantly less "likeability" for theexperimenter. H owev er, justified frustration subjec ts' ratings on the "ability" dim en-sion did tend to be more directly between the relatively good and bad ratings given bycontrol and unjustified subjects, respectively.

Hostile aggression ratings. For the "g rad e" variable, an A was assigned a score of4, a B was assigned a score of 3, and so forth. An om nibus grou p main effect was foundon this "gra de" measure, F(2,31) = 9 .06, P < 0 .001 . The experimenter was assigned agrade reasonably equivalent to an "A " in the control condition (M = 3.67), a " B " in thejustified frustration condition (M = 2.92), and a "C" in the unjustified frustration condi-tion (M = 1.92). Planned comparisons yielded a significant difference between the un-justified frustration con dition and the justified frustration co nditio n, ? (31) = 2.37, P

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Effects of Frustration