Sex differences in social representations of aggression: Men justify, women excuse?

Women tend to hold an expressive social representation of aggression (as a loss of self-control) while men tend to hold an instrumental representation (as a means of imposing control over others). Because expressive beliefs correspond to excuses and instrumental beliefs to justifications, it may be a sex difference in moral acceptability of aggression that informs social representation. Participants completed the Expagg questionnaire with reference to an episode of same-sex or cross-sex physical aggression and rated the moral acceptability of their behaviour. Women scored higher on Expagg (specifically lower than men on the instrumental scale) but there was no effect of target sex or participant-by-target interaction. Contrary to expectation, women rated their own aggression as more acceptable than did men and hence this could not explain their lower levels of instrumentality relative to men. (C) 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.