Physiological Responses to Ingroup-Perpetrated Violence

Abstract: Violence perpetrated by people’s own group can cause social identity-based stress. People can respond to this stress defensively or non-defensively. This study examined whether individual differences in (non-)defensiveness of ingroup-perpetrated violence are instantiated through motivational states of challenge vs. threat. Participants (N = 130) read a scenario in which either an ingroup (American) or an outgroup (Australian) soldier had tortured an Iranian captive. Participants then gave a 2-minute speech to introduce themselves to an Iranian confederate whom they believed that they would later meet, while their cardiovascular responses were measured to differentiate motivational states of challenge and threat. <br><br>The sas syntax file presents our data management and analyses that we ran on the merged dataset (within the sas file) of the two raw data files. The syntax file is annotated to assist in its comprehensibility and with analysis.