Frustration Response Categories and Level of Hostile Expression

Subjects were categorized on the basis of a Situational Inventory as having one of four response tendencies to annoying experiences: immediate action, deliberating action, accepting nonaction, and anxious nonaction. In the laboratory, subjects were placed in a frustrating situation and influenced to channel their responses in one of these same four modes. Measures were taken of hostility expression. Two findngs were significant: (a) The level of expressed hostility, regardless of one's previous habitual preferred response, was affected by the way in which one dealt with annoyance in the current situation, (b) Habitual modes of responding to annoying situations were related to the amount of hostility that was expressed when faced with a frustrating agent. In both habitual and laboratory conditions, immediate action responses resulted in the highest level of hostile expression, and deliberating action responses resulted in the lowest level of hostile expression.