Students were recruited for a psychology experiment ... In the hallway on their way to the lab, the students had to pass by an accomplice of the experimenter who was filing papers in a cabinet. In half of the cases, when the student brushed past the accomplice, he slammed the drawer shut and muttered, "Asshole." Then the experimenter (who was kept in the dark as to whether the student had been insulted) welcomed the student into the lab, observed his demeanor, gave him a questionnaire, and drew a blood sample. The students from the northern states, they found, laughed off the insult and behaved no differently from the control group who had entered without incident. But the insulted students from the southern states walked in fuming. They reported lower self-esteem in a questionnaire, and their blood samples showed elevated levels of testosterone and of cortisol, a stress hormone. They behaved more dominantly toward the experimenter and shook his hand more firmly, and when approaching another accomplice in the narrow hallway on their way out, they refused to step aside to let him pass.
Yeehaw! Also...
In one study, they sent fake letters inquiring about jobs to companies all over the country. Half of them contained ...(a confession about accidentally killing someone in a fight over his fiancee in the past and now regretting it)... The other half contained a similar paragraph in which the applicant confessed to a felony conviction for grand theft auto, which, he said, he had foolishly committed to help support his wife and young children... northern companies were more forgiving of the auto theft than the honor killing; the southern and western companies were more forgiving of the honor killing
Both from
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Very interesting so far.
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