Aggress against the dissent: The consequences of interacting with opposing viewpoints.

Abstract

Disagreements over conflicting viewpoints are common and have important implications for social relationships and overall well-being. A large corpus of research from the political and social sciences documents the myriad negative consequences of disclosing dissenting viewpoints. However, relatively less is known about how sharing (and encountering) opposing viewpoints impacts real-time affective, physiological, and behavioral processes. Toward this end, this research manipulated the beliefs, values, and opinions held by an opposing other in a novel dyadic context to (a) examine ongoing processes during interpersonal disagreements and (b) establish an immersive paradigm to experimentally study interpersonal disagreement (vs. agreement). Participants (N = 193) engaged in a topic discussion task with (ostensibly) an unacquainted participant who was, in fact, a confederate trained to either (a) agree with the participant's stance on the topic (i.e., agree condition, n = 95) or (b) disagree with the participant's stance on the topic (i.e., disagree condition, n = 98). Results demonstrate that participants assigned to interact in the disagree condition reported more negative affect, exhibited greater cardiac output and a shorter preejection period (i.e., a profile consistent with anger), displayed more negative affect (anger and anxiety), and formed more negative attributions of their partner, compared to participants assigned to the agree condition. Then, exploratory analyses indicated that when participants experienced and displayed more anger, they were more likely to aggress against their interaction partner. Implications for theory development and interpersonal dynamics are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).