Explicit group-superiority claims provoke cyber aggression toward the braggart: The influence of (common) group identity of the observer

In these experiments, participants were instructed to read an implicit or an explicit superiority claim about another college group (outgroup), after the manipulation, we measured aggression by giving observers the opportunity to (anonymously) make a negative evaluation to damage the braggart’s chance of getting a desirable job.

Experiment 1 (N = 60) was a first test of the prediction that explicit (rather than implicit) a group-bragging would cause aggressive evaluation on the braggart, because the explicit group-superiority claims was seen as a provocation by observers from another group, which was confirmed by mediation analyses. In experiment 2 (N = 120) we further explored the influence of the observer’s identity to their own group on the response to the bragging of another group.