The interactive effect of physiological arousal and narcissistic personality on emotion of anger and aggressive behavior

埼玉県越谷市An experiment was conducted to investigate the interactive effect of the physiological arousal and one of the personality factors which facilitated anger and aggression -narcissistic peersonality- upon the emotion of anger and verbal-aggressive behavior. 120 university students (60 male and 60 female) participated in the experiment. First the arousal level (SPR) of each subject was measured. Then subjects were presented a frustration story which contained one of four informations about the cause of frustration : frustrater's negligene, his altruistic intent, his malicious intent, or accident. Subjects were asked to infer the intensity of the victem's anger and aggression against the frustrater. Finally, Narcissistic Personality Inventory was administered to subjects. A three-way ANOVA (arousal, narcissistic personality, information of cause) indicated that all three independent variables and the interaction of arousal and narcissistic personality influenced the inference of anger and aggression. Subjects infered the most anger and aggression of the victem when both their arousal level and the tendencies of narcissism were high. These results were interpreted in flame of the spreading activation theory (Collins & Loftus, 1975)