PATTERNS OF AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR IN EXPERIMENTALLY CREATED "SOCIAL CLIMATES"

1. In a first experiment, Lippitt compared one group of five 10-year-old children, under autocratic leadership, with a comparable group under democratic leadership. In a second experiment, Lippitt and White studied four comparable clubs of 10-year-old boys, each of which passed successively through three club periods in such a way that there were altogether five democratic periods, five autocratic periods, and two "laissez-faire" periods. 2. In the second experiment, the factor of personality differences in the boys was controlled by having each group pass through autocracy and then democracy, or vice versa. The factor of leader's personality was controlled by having each of four leaders play the role of autocrat and the rôle of democratic leader at least once. 3. Records on each club meeting include stenographic records of conversation, quantitative symbolic records of group structure, quantitative symbolic records of all social interactions, and a continuous interpretive running account. Parents and teachers were interviewed; each boy was given the Rorschach ink blots, a Moreno-type questionnaire, and was interviewed three times. Analysis of causal relationships between these various types of data is still far from complete. As a preliminary report we are giving here a part of the data bearing upon one specific problem, that of aggression. 4. In the first experiment, hostility was 30 times as frequent in the autocratic as in the democratic group. Aggression (including both "hostility" and "joking hostility" ) was 8 times as frequent. Much of this aggression was directed toward two successive scapegoats within the group; none of it was directed toward the autocrat. 5. In the second experiment, one of the five autocracies showed the same aggressive reaction as was found in the first experiment. In the other four autocracies, the boys showed an extremely non-aggressive, "apathetic" pattern of behavior. 6. Four types of evidence indicate that this lack of aggression was probably not caused by lack of frustration, but by the representive influence of the autocrat: (a) outburst of aggression on the days of transition of a freer atmospheres; (b) a sharp rise of aggression when the autocrat left the room; (c) other indications of generalized apathy, such as an absence of smiling and joking; and (d) the fact that 19 out of 20 boys liked their democratic leader better than their autocratic leader, and 7 out of 10 also liked their "laissez-faire" leader better. 7. There were two wars." more or less playful, and without bodily damage, between clubs meeting in the same room at the same time. The first of these began gradually, the second suddenly. Three factors, present in both cases, seemed conducive to group conflict: (a) irritation and tension produced by a hostile stranger, (b) absence of a respected adult, and (c) lack of any absorbing alternative activity. 8. There were two striking instances of aggression against impersonal objects. 9. A general interpretation of the above data on aggression can be made in terms of four underlying factors: tension, restricted space of free movement, rigidity of group structure, and style of living (culture). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]