@article{ref1,
title="Low competitive status elicits aggression in healthy young men: behavioral and neural evidence",
journal="Social cognitive and affective neuroscience",
year="2021",
author="Buades-Rotger, Macià and Göttlich, Martin and Weiblen, Ronja and Petereit, Pauline and Scheidt, Thomas and Keevil, Brian G. and Krämer, Ulrike M.",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
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 aggression are linked with a sharper status differentiation in the striatum and with greater reactivity to status-enhancing victories in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Third, activity in ventromedial, ventrolateral, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is associated with trial-wise increases in status-dependent aggressive behavior. Taken together, our results run counter to narratives glorifying aggression in competitive situations. Rather, we show that those in the lower ranks of skill-based hierarchies are more likely to behave aggressively and identify the potential neural basis of this phenomenon.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1749-5016",
doi="10.1093/scan/nsab061",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab061"
}