Motivational Mechanisms and Hazing Behavior
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Principal Investigator(s):
Aldo Cimino
University of California, Santa Barbara
Email: aldo_cimino@umail.ucsb.edu
Home page: www.aldocimino.com
Field period: 4/12/2006 - 4/20/2006
What motivates people to abuse new or prospective group members? One possible contributor may be a byproduct of evolved anti-free rider mechanisms. In particular, the low cumulative labor inputs of new members along with the automatic availability of certain group benefits may trigger punitiveness on the part of veteran members. This theory was tested by randomly assigning subjects to imagine themselves as members of fictitious groups. Subjects were then asked to recommend an appropriate "initiation" for new members and to characterize their group in terms of its benefits.
Hypotheses:H1: Subjects primed as high contributors to their group will haze more severely than subjects primed as low contributors.
H2: Subjects assigned to an intensely cooperative and dangerous group will haze more severely than subjects assigned to a group without such properties.
H3: The perceived automatic benefits of group membership will be positively associated with hazing severity.
H4: The perceived automatic benefits of group membership will mediate the effect of group type on hazing severity (see H2).
H5: The perceived non-automatic benefits of group membership will not be positively associated with hazing severity.
H6: Hazing severity will be positively associated with hazing coerciveness.
1. Group type: a) Ice Walkers, a group of arctic survival specialists; b) Bug Watchers, a group of entomology enthusiasts.
2. Contribution level: a) High (i.e., significant group involvement) b) Low, (i.e., moderate group involvement).
1. Hazing severity: Hazing severity is operationalized as the desired initiation stressfulness for new members.
Additional Information:Automatic/Non-automatic benefits: Automatic group benefits are low cost and become available around the time of group entry. Subjects rate four group benefits, three of which are considered automatic (status, group aid, and short-term specialized knowledge acquisition) and one of which is non-automatic (long-term specialized knowledge acquisition). "Automatic benefits" is thus a summed, composite variable.
Summary of Findings:H1: Not supported; there was no main effect of contribution on hazing severity.
H2: Supported; group type impacted hazing severity.
H3: Supported; automatic benefits were positively associated with hazing severity after statistically controlling for group type and non-automatic benefits.
H4: Supported; automatic benefits appeared to mediate the effect of group type.
H5: Supported; non-automatic benefits were not associated with hazing severity after statistically controlling for group type and automatic benefits.
H6: Supported; hazing severity was positively associated with hazing coerciveness.
Similar to prior experiments, automatic benefits and group type acted as independent predictors of hazing severity, while non-automatic benefits did not. In addition, hazing severity was positively associated with the amount of pressure applied to hazees. Unlike in prior experiments, however, automatic benefits appeared to have a much smaller mediation effect and group contribution had no main effect on hazing severity. The mediation effect does appear to be larger for the college-aged (18-24) subset of the sample, which closely matches prior experimental populations and suggests a cohort effect. The effectiveness of the contribution prime may be limited by the relative difficulty of simulating a history of hard work for a hypothetical group.