Quarrel behavior can be regarded as a mild aggression. A quarrelsome person not only often quarrels with a specific object in a certain situation, but also extends this tendency to other situations and objects, so it is stable across situations.

"I won't talk nonsense with you, you can get out!"

"I've had enough of doing useless tests for these * * * this month!"

These are two clips from the recently hit American TV series "Dr. House". Dr. House argued with others in his peculiar vicious tone. The main character, pressure reducing valve House, is an expert in infectious diseases and kidney diseases. He has superb medical skills, led his medical team and cured many intractable diseases. Dr. House had a hemangioma in his right leg, which caused a large area of muscle resection. He has to walk on crutches and often takes a lot of vicodin to relieve leg pain. Dr. House is eccentric and cynical. He thinks that the world is full of lies, and patients like to lie, so he tries to avoid direct contact with patients and thinks that they will not lie. Not only does Dr. House often quarrel with three members of his team, but he also quarrels with his boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, every time he meets. Nevertheless, with his extraordinary thinking and reasoning ability and rich knowledge and experience, Dr. House has solved one diagnosis problem after another and saved countless patients.

Although obvious physical aggression is not common in adults' daily life, quarrels occur from time to time, and quarrels can be regarded as a mild aggression. A quarrelsome person not only often quarrels with a specific object in a certain situation, but also extends this tendency to other situations and objects, so it is stable across situations. In the above example, Dr. House is a typical quarrelsome person. Whether facing patients, colleagues or bosses, he often ignores the feelings of others, cynically, and shows great impatience.

Psychologists have found through a large number of systematic studies that quarreling behavior is influenced by the following factors.

The first is the type of interpersonal relationship. For example, quarrels between lovers are very different from quarrels between friends or colleagues. The frequency of quarrels between lovers is higher, but the intensity of quarrels is lower. Although the frequency of quarrels between colleagues with ordinary relationships is low, once quarrels occur, they are not only strong, but also have serious consequences.

The second is the perception and explanation of other people's behavior. When individuals perceive that the other person's behavior is threatening or hostile, the possibility of quarreling will greatly increase. There are individual differences and situational differences in this perception and explanation. First of all, some differences in personality traits will affect the perception and interpretation of hostility. For example, individuals with higher levels of trait anger are more likely to make threats or hostile explanations to vague hostile situations. Secondly, the relative gap in social status will also have an impact on this cognition and explanation. Individuals with higher social status will take more arguments or quarrels about other people's criticisms; People with lower social status are often criticized by others. For example, Robert Chase, Dr. House's assistant, is almost obedient to House. Thirdly, the intimacy of interpersonal relationships will also affect the perception and interpretation of hostility. It is found that the closer the relationship between individuals, the more sensitive they will be to each other's criticism, while lovers are more concerned about each other's views.

The third is the individual's emotional experience of quarreling behavior. Although most people's emotional experience of quarreling behavior is unpleasant, the degree of unpleasantness is different. Some people are unhappy at a higher level, others are unhappy at a lower level, and even some people will have a positive emotional experience after quarreling.

The fourth is the level of serotonin. Many studies have found that serotonin can inhibit aggressive behavior. If the level of tryptophan (the raw material for synthesizing 5- hydroxytryptamine) decreases, aggression may increase.

Back to Dr. House's story, we can easily find that all these factors are affecting his quarrel behavior. Dr. House's patients, colleagues and superiors all think that he is an unfriendly person. If he is a real person, we can find that the following process will affect his relationship with others. First, when quarreling, he won't have much negative emotional experience. He won't be unhappy because of his quarrelling behavior, nor will he be happy because of his friendly behavior. This may be due to taking vicodin for a long time, which weakened his emotional experience intensity of his behavior. Second, he is sensitive to the unfriendly behavior of others and will strongly fight back. He may have learned this behavioral response pattern at home, which led to his estrangement from his parents. Third, when he is accused, he will not obey others, but quarrel with others. On the one hand, it may be because of his high position in practical work, on the other hand, he thinks he is superior. Finally, when a colleague secretly asked Dr. House to use SSRI (an antidepressant that can increase tryptophan levels), his temper was obviously much better.

These findings show that people can reduce quarrelling in many ways. First, with the increase of serotonin level in the brain, quarreling behavior will decrease. By using SSRI or exposing individuals to strong light (such as increasing the brightness of indoor lights and often taking quarrelers to the sun, etc.). ), can improve the level of tryptophan in the human body, thereby improving the level of 5- hydroxytryptamine and reducing quarreling behavior. Second, by changing the connection between quarreling behavior and emotional experience, quarreling behavior can be influenced. For example, by helping individuals realize the long-term negative consequences of quarreling (tense relationship with colleagues or broken relationship with lovers), the relationship between quarreling behavior and unpleasant experiences can be increased, so that individuals can reduce quarreling. Thirdly, bickering behavior can be reduced by improving the interpersonal environment of bickering people. For example, individual psychological intervention is carried out on quarrelsome people, trying to make their behavior more friendly. Gradually, they will find that their friendly behavior will get the same feedback from others, and then gradually increase their friendly behavior. Of course, it is also possible to improve the interpersonal environment of members within the group through group intervention. For example, teachers can increase friendly behaviors among students through group training, promote the development of students' prosocial behaviors, make them help each other and reduce the occurrence of quarrels.

(This paper is the research result of the 11th Five-Year Plan project "Research on Personality Development Mechanism and Intervention of Children and Adolescents" (BBI080048).

(Author: Research Center for Psychological Development and Education, Liaoning Normal University)