Abstract
This study explored intergroup preemptive behaviors and the emotional mechanism through 3 experiments. Experiment 1 designed the Group Preemptive Strike Game and found that in intergroup situations, individuals experienced intense fear and hope when they faced the potential threat from gaming counterparts, but their preemptive behaviors were not altered. Experiments 2 and 3 were designed to simulate real-life groups with characteristics such as punishment (Experiment 2) and leadership (Experiment 3), and found that people experienced fear and hope when they faced the potential threat and tended to attack preemptively. Fear and hope were mediators between the potential threats and preemptive behaviors, in which fear increased the preemptive behaviors and hope decreased the preemptive behaviors. This study improves the security and well–being of people by helping them find solutions to defensive aggression.
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Data Availability
All data analysed during this study are included in this published article. The data has been uploaded to Mendeley Data, here is the link: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/b3646gm7v7/1.
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Funding
This study was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (No. 22NDJC066YB), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang (No. SJWY2021007), the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Youth Foundation Project (No. 18YJC190011) and the Research and Innovation Fund of Ningbo University (No. IF2022033).
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Xiyan Song: research ideas, data analysis, original draft; Lei Liu and Yu Li: article revision; Lina Lin and Zhencheng Wang: data collection.
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Song, X., Lin, L., Wang, Z. et al. Preemptive strikes or not: the role of emotion on intergroup defensive aggression. Curr Psychol 43, 5514–5526 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04746-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04746-3