The Impact of Personal Control, Collective Narcissism, and Group Membership on Aggression

Abstract

Previous research indicates that politics are a key factor in people’s lives, and identifying with a specific political party is important. But with political identification comes an increase in political polarization and aggressive inclinations towards political out-group members. The current study explores factors that impact aggressive inclinations towards both political in-group and out-group members using a 2 (personal control: low/high) x 2 (political in-group/out-group) between-subjects experimental design. Results revealed that for those under low personal control, state anger and perceptions of target hostility mediated the relationship between collective narcissism and aggressive inclinations toward out-group targets, while controlling for secure in-group positivity. Additional analyses indicated that for those under low personal control, political party (i.e., Democrat vs. Republican) moderated the mediating effect of perceptions of target hostility on the relationship between target type (i.e., in-group vs. outgroup) and aggressive inclinations. Specifically, only for those who self-identified as Republican, political out-group targets were perceived as more hostile, which in turn led to an increase in aggressive inclinations towards those individuals. The current study suggests potential implications of the effects of collective narcissism, state anger, and perceptions of target hostility and whether using interventions involving restoring personal control can reduce aggression.