Situational determinants of anger-related behavior

Description

The raw data consist of the binary judgments of 115 first-year psychology students who indicated whether or not they would display each of 14 anger-related behaviors when being angry at someone in each of 9 situations. The 14 behaviors consist of 7 pairs of reactions that reflect a particular strategy to deal with situations in which one is angry at someone:

1. Anger-out: (a) You flew off the handle, (b) You started a fight

2. Avoidance: (a) You avoided a confrontation, (b) You went out of the other's way

3. Social sharing (a) You unburdened your heart to others, (b) You told others what had happened

4. Assertive behavior: (a) You said what was bothering you in a direct and sober way, (b) You calmly explained what was bothering you

5. Indirect behavior (a) You showed something was bothering you without saying anything, (b) You started to sulk

6. Anger-in: (a) You suppressed your anger, (b) You bottled up your anger

7. Reconciliation (a) You reconciled, (b) You talked things out

The six situations are constructed by crossing the levels of two factors with three levels: (1) the extent to which one likes the instigator of anger (like, unfamilar, dislike), and (2) the status of the instigator of anger (lower status, equal status, higher status)

Usage

data(anger2)

Format

The data consist of a list of 5 objects:

1. data: A 115 X 9 X 14 matrix of binary observations (0/1). The observation in cell (i,j,k) equals 1 if person i would display behavior k in situation j and 0 otherwise.

2. freq1: A 9 X 14 matrix of frequencies. The frequency in cell (j,k) indicates the number of respondents who indicate that they would display behavior k in situation j.

3. freqtot: A 9 X 14 matrix of frequencies. The frequency in cell (j,k) indicates the total number of respondents who judged the situation-response pair (j,k).

4. rowlabels: A vector of labels for the situations.

5. columnlabels: A vector of labels for the anger-related behaviors.

Source

Kuppens, P., Van Mechelen, I., and Meulders, M. (2004). Every cloud has a silver lining: Interpersonal and individual differences determinants of anger-related behaviors. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1550-1564.

Results