Low competitive status elicits aggression in healthy young men: behavioural and neural evidence.

ABSTRACT: Winners are commonly assumed to compete more aggressively than losers. Here, we find overwhelming evidence for the opposite. We first demonstrate that low-ranking teams commit more fouls than they receive in top-tier soccer, ice hockey and basketball men's leagues. We replicate this effect in the laboratory, showing that male participants deliver louder sound blasts to a rival when placed in a low-status position. Using neuroimaging, we characterize brain activity patterns that encode competitive status as well as those that facilitate status-dependent aggression in healthy young men. These analyses reveal three key findings. First, anterior hippocampus and striatum contain multivariate representations of competitive status. Second, interindividual differences in status-dependent aggressio

SUBMITTER: Buades-Rotger M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8599182 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature