Mario Pereyra and Moreno with a group of colleagues at Universidad Adventista del Plata (UAP), Argentina, have been investigating how people react when they are offended, the disorders that friction causes, and the ways to overcome disputes. They investigation have revealed eight characteristic attitudes. Attitudes are distinct forms of behavior that reflect states of emotion, thoughts, and will. The eight characteristic attitudes are:
- Submission: Passive acceptance of insult, subordinating oneself to the criticism or reproving attitude of the offender, inventing humbling or self-disqualifying justifications. People of this kind of attitude often say: “I deserve it” or “It’s my fault.”
- Denial: Conscious exclusion from memory of ideas or feeling associated with the wrong suffered; making an effort to “forget the matter.”
- Hostile reaction: Predisposition to react immediately with violence, attacking the aggressor with the same act as the offense; a primary attitude that may not leave resentment with the subject but will probably aggravate to conflict with the person who suffers from the emotional outburst
- Revenge: “An eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth: Intentionally searching and planning for vengeance, trying to deal out to the offender a similar or greater punishment that that suffered. It is also different from the former attitude in that the reaction is not immediate-much time can pass before retaliation takes place.
- Resentment: Tendency to retain feelings of anger and hate, remembering often the wrong suffered, maintaining behaviors of animosity and rancor toward the guilty party without actually taking direct acts of revenge as in the revenge reaction mentioned above.
- Explanation: Confronting the perpetrator for and explanation, justification, or motive for the action in order to overcome the discord through dialogue; to “clear things up.”
- Forgiveness: This attitude also centers on communication but reaches understanding to clear up the causes of the controversy satisfactorily; the subject closes the doors to hostile actions, vengeance, or rancor.
- Reconciliation: Overcoming discord through dialogue and with a forgiving disposition, just like the two previous attitudes, but with the intentions of reviving the bond of affection with the offender, in order to reestablish a good relationship.
When Mario Pereyra and Moreno analyzed hundreds of studies done with a test made to measure these attitudes (The Attitudes in Situations of Offense Questionnaire, the ASOQ) with people of different ages, sex, marital status, beliefs, and origins, they discovered that these specific forms of reaction correspond to three basic models:
- The attitudes of submission and denial, which can be interpreted as the tendency to internalize hostile impulses, repressing or denying them. It is the case of one who “swallows” or guards his or her emotions, showing on the exterior a calm appearance, “putting on a brave face.”
- Response corresponds to behaviors of hostility, revenge, and resentment. Unlike submissive behaviors, this tendency involves aggression, making sure to hurt those who hurt you. It involves “outbursts: and upsets that feed anger until it can be discharged.
- Form of response channels the emotions through dialogue and negotiation. This covers the last three attitudes-explanation forgiveness, and reconciliation. It consists of seeking to overcome conflicts, preserving good interpersonal relationships, and managing the problem through communication.
Furthermore, multiple scientific investigations report that either the repression or denial of aggression (the first response pattern), and the violent externalization of hostile emotion (the second response pattern), can be associated with grave physical and mental health disorders. Therefore, it can be inferred that the dialogue behaviors, forgiveness, and reconciliation would be related to good health.
Related with it, more investigation also find that those who never express their emotions but bottle them up deep inside are most susceptible to cancer. Likewise, the release of anger in an explosive way, with violent emotion, can also cause illnesses such as heart attacks or other cardiovascular symptoms.
Lastly, the more interesting study, still conducted by Moreno and Pereyra, of a sample of 863 people from five countries from different religious orientations found that those who admitted to having active religious beliefs and customs, in contrast with those who did not, showed very different scores in all types of attitudes in the face offence. The differences were most marked in the aggressive responses. Those who were not religious had higher scores in revenge, rancor, and hostility, while believers showed a higher disposition for submission and denial, as well as those behaviors that tended toward dialogue and the search of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Posted by joyinme 
Posted by joyinme 
Posted by joyinme 
