According to realistic conflict theory (RCT), people develop negative attitudes towards others as a result of competition with those others over limited resources. I hypothesized that participants would change their opinions of others in a greater negative direction if those others were competitive in resource use than if those others are cooperative. Additionally, I hypothesized that the participants' own resource use would influence how they changed their opinions of the others. Participants were asked to complete a ten-item trait-rating questionnaire before and after competing in a simulated fishing environment against a simulated group that fished either a little (cooperative opponent) or a lot (competitive opponent). As predicted, when fishing against competitive opponents, participants changed their ratings in a more negative direction than when fishing against cooperative opponents. In addition, participants' own fishing behaviour influenced some of their rating shifts. I discuss an alternative explanation of the results as based on group identity processes (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and suggest that the effects of such processes should be directly compared with competition over resources in the same study. Limitations of the study are discussed along with potential solutions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVIV.1828/113 |
| Date | 29 September 2006 |
| Creators | Major, Kasia |
| Contributors | Gifford, Robert |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 10601913 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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