Work

Affective prediction errors in persistence and escalation of aggression.

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: = 4,607), participants choosing aggressive or nonaggressive actions aggressed more against disliked group members and often escalated or persisted in taking actions that felt better than expected (positive affective PE), especially when those actions were aggressive. Crucially, inducing incidental empathy toward the group of the target rendered affective PE signals sensitive to group identification-participants escalated aggression that felt better than expected relatively less toward liked versus disliked group members. That said, affective PEs did not always add explanatory power beyond levels of postoutcome affect alone; we discuss the importance and implications of these results. In summary, we reveal affective PE integration as a candidate algorithm facilitating exceptions to harm aversion in intergroup conflict. More broadly, we highlight for affective science and decision-making researchers the necessity of appropriately testing separable components of affective signals in predicting subsequent behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology General

DOI: 10.1037/xge0001570

Authors: Marius C. Vollberg, Mina Cikara

Institutions: University of Geneva, Harvard University

Language: English

Topic: Social and Intergroup Psychology

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: National Science Foundation, Association for Psychological Science, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

Awards: Learning-based motivation of intergroup aggression, Learning beyond reward: Affective prediction errors as cross-domain learning signals