Jeffrey C. Savitsky

Aggressor's response to the victim's facial expression of emotion

Abstract Male college students ( N = 96) were met by an experimental confederate who either agreed or disagreed with their opinion. The subjects were then given an opportunity to deliver electric shock to the confederate (victim), who responded to the shock with a facial expression of anger, fear, joy, or neutrality. The opinion condition had no effect, but the victims facial expressions were clearly perceived by the subjects and two of them significantly influenced the amount of shock delivered to the victim by the subjects. The expression of enjoyment (smile) increased aggression while that of anger decreased aggression. The effects of the fear and neutral expressions did not differ from each other, and neither had a consistent significant effect on the amount of shock administered by the subjects.

Cheating, intention, and punishment from an equity theory perspective

Abstract Male college students were given the opportunity to deliver aversive noise to a partner (confederate) contingent on the partners “mistakes” in a learning task. Subjects were either not informed about a reward or told that they, their partner, or a charity would receive a monetary reward for speedy learning. Half of the subjects observed the confederate cheat, while half did not observe any deceptive behavior. The intensity of punitive behavior seemed to vary in accordance with predictions derived from equity theory. That is, cheating for a charity, a “good cause” resulted in less intense punishment than did cheating for selfish gain. On the other hand, mistakes, uncomplicated by cheating, which deprived a charity were punished more intensely than were mistakes whose only result accrued to the confederate himself.

The Legal Decision Making of Well-Informed Subjects: The Effect of Miranda Warnings

College students were asked to serve as legal advisors to six potential defendants. Prior to this task, the subjects were either reminded or not reminded about the Miranda rights via a standard warning. It was found that the students, whether or not they had been reminded of the Miranda protections, gave advice that accurately reflected the varying degree of legal jeopardy faced by the potential defendants. Subjects indicated that legal protections were more needed for potential defendents who were involved in situations that contained police accusations, rather than merely accusations by school authorities, or accusations of more severe criminal activity. However, the presence of the Miranda warning also caused subjects to evaluate legal protections as more necessary. Thus, despite the fact the subjects in this study were well informed and able to utilize legal protections in an appropriate fashion, the presence of a Miranda warning continued to serve the important purpose of encouraging the use of self-protective legal safeguards.

Emotion Awareness and Antisocial Behavior

In this chapter Savitsky and Eby extend a line of thinking and research that Savitsky began in his doctoral dissertation. In that study, Savitsky showed that under particular experimental conditions, subjects’ punitive attitudes and behaviors were differentially influenced by various emotion-specific facial expressions of the victims. Savitsky and his students have continued to develop evidence for the importance of emotion communication (expressive signals and their interpretation) in various types of interpersonal transactions.