Low competitive status elicits aggression in healthy young men: behavioural and neural evidence.
Macià Buades-RotgerMartin GöttlichRonja WeiblenPauline PetereitThomas ScheidtBrian G KeevilUlrike M KrämerPublished in: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience (2022)
Winners are commonly assumed to compete more aggressively than losers. Here, we find overwhelming evidence for the opposite. We first demonstrate that low-ranking teams commit more fouls than they receive in top-tier soccer, ice hockey and basketball men's leagues. We replicate this effect in the laboratory, showing that male participants deliver louder sound blasts to a rival when placed in a low-status position. Using neuroimaging, we characterize brain activity patterns that encode competitive status as well as those that facilitate status-dependent aggression in healthy young men. These analyses reveal three key findings. First, anterior hippocampus and striatum contain multivariate representations of competitive status. Second, interindividual differences in status-dependent aggression are linked with a sharper status differentiation in the striatum and with greater reactivity to status-enhancing victories in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Third, activity in ventromedial, ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is associated with trial-wise increases in status-dependent aggressive behaviour. Taken together, our results run counter to narratives glorifying aggression in competitive situations. Rather, we show that those in the lower ranks of skill-based hierarchies are more likely to behave aggressively and identify the potential neural basis of this phenomenon.
Keyphrases
- prefrontal cortex
- middle aged
- randomized controlled trial
- working memory
- gene expression
- functional connectivity
- study protocol
- climate change
- phase iii
- transcranial direct current stimulation
- dna methylation
- neuropathic pain
- phase ii
- double blind
- cerebral ischemia
- placebo controlled
- single cell
- subarachnoid hemorrhage