How Can Psychologists Study Complicated Behaviors?

The Challenge of Profiling School Shooters

The recurring incidents of school shootings have left society grappling for answers. Though psychologists have tried to identify common traits among perpetrators, no foolproof indicators have emerged. According to psychologist Robin Kowalski, many shooters feel rejected or have a history of being bullied.

Dr. Kowalski’s conclusions are based on studying the records of school shooters and mass murderers. Analysis of such records is a helpful way to get important insights into potential causes of this behavior but it’s not a great tool for predicting future actions. Other methods have been survey-based or relied on questionnaires, but even then, it’s hard to get meaningful answers to questions like “If you were angry at someone, would you react aggressively?” Standard scientific practice often involves bringing a phenomenon into the lab for in-depth study. But how can this be achieved with a topic so delicate and complex?

Designing an Experiment

Let’s look at how psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge tackled this challenge. Dr. Twenge designed an experiment to make people feel rejected, then angry, and then observed if they acted aggressively. We’ll explore one of her methods here.

Step 1: Manipulate feelings of rejection

When participants arrived at the lab, students were put together with a group of 4 to 6 other students, given a nametag, and instructed to chat with other students to find out more about them. After 15 minutes, the students each went to a separate room where they filled out a form picking two peers they’d like to work with. The experimenter then collected the form and promised to return with group assignments in just a few minutes.

While they were waiting, the students were instructed to write an essay about a controversial topic—their opinion about abortion. They were then given an essay written by another student and asked to evaluate it with comments about the ideas in the essay.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Next, the experimenters randomly assigned students to one of two conditions. The students in the “accepted” condition were told: “I have good news for you. Everyone chose you as someone they’d like to work with.”

The students in the “rejected” condition were told: “I hate to tell you this, but no one chose you as someone they wanted to work with.” So now some students felt very much accepted, and others felt very much rejected.

Step 2: Produce feelings of anger

The rejection just described surely produced some negative feelings, but the researchers included another step to ensure that the students were actually angry.

Remember the abortion essay? Now each student had their essay returned to them with comments (actually made by the researchers and not other students). The comments were negative, often insulting and condescending (this is a very reliable technique that research psychologists sometimes use to produce real feelings of anger).

Step 3: Test aggressive behavior

Finally, to test aggression, students competed in a game against another student. The loser of each round was subjected to a loud noise. Before the game, students chose how loud and long the noise would be for the other player. This level of sound intensity and duration was the measure of aggression in this study. As the researchers wrote, “the participants were effectively given a weapon that could be used to blast the other person.’ (p. 1063-1064).

The researchers found a very large aggression difference between those who had been rejected and those who had been accepted, even if the participants knew that they were playing against someone who had not rejected them but who they thought had only evaluated their essay.

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