Rejection perceptions: feeling disrespected leads to greater aggression than feeling disliked

Social rejection can lead to feeling disliked and disrespected. From research on the culture of honor and perception of procedural justice, we predicted that feeling disrespected should be a more potent predictor of retaliatory aggression than feeling disliked. In four experiments, using correlational measures and experimental manipulations of dislike and disrespect, people who felt disrespected responded with greater aggression than people who felt disliked. The results suggest that merely being rejected may not be enough to trigger aggression; the person needs to feel disrespected. This has implications for understanding why people are more likely to respond to rejection with aggression, as well as future research explaining how people’s perception of rejection affects their behavior.