THREATS OF VIOLENCE AND AGREEABLENESS 631 of threats,and in tempe rarily threatening situations.In Study a ance.we show that responses to threats of violence are more that ived threats of vio nce rated themselves as ecwboddnotctroecyrarWece Biasing Personality Characteristics Compared with the control able toward familiar others but less ag Mor the par ronic perceptions w shifts in ag blen tional ex of thre nces of thre found to in a be sult ghlight the uni s.K to a co ing to help ingroup members and al eve trust in members of or s ingroup re he y in d ed of the lif Functional specificity in Threat Responding 200.19983.Ho 199. Together,these studies help to develop a deeper understanding lity chara cteristics can shift in the .In the past. 2006:Misch 20m ould be h ot findings sugs that th people can be characterized the per cnces in the perso ocially avoidant with 1995 el et al.2002 rou pr ute to a gro ng bod f da n ct a .2010.H that s f the n be the out affiliation foll nstics and their conditions of the local such to nat onal-l evel conditio such not to thr atsof ce bu he results ent effect agreeable n (e.g,a person from a large vs.small family greeablene s in the first two studies.One possibility is that wher viol by different environmental cues bad different emotional compe y had been thinkine about how the d around st eers (a sledoifcrcot al ines about and w rsus how they acte und frie nds an t inve tion builds on this highlighting the point of the 001),indicating that when eople typically respond to Big items they are different levels of analysis—in nations that differentially experi￾ence threats of violence, in individual differences in the perception of threats, and in temporarily threatening situations. In Study 1, as threats of violence experienced at the national level increased, agreeableness increased. In Study 2, individuals who chronically perceived threats of violence rated themselves as more agreeable than those who did not chronically perceive such threats. In Study 3, a temporary manipulation of threat led to selective, target￾specific shifts in agreeableness. Compared with the control con￾dition, participants in the threat condition reported being more agreeable toward familiar others but less agreeable toward unfa￾miliar others. Moreover, this relation was moderated by the par￾ticipants’ number of siblings: Participants with a large number of siblings were especially likely to show shifts in agreeableness in the threat condition, but participants with relatively few siblings did not change in agreeableness. Study 4 was a field study in which a threat of violence was found to influence a behavior associated with agreeableness—willingness to help others. Relative to a con￾trol condition, those primed with a threat of violence were more willing to help ingroup members and less willing to help outgroup members. Returning to the national level in Study 5, a similar selective pattern was found: As threats of violence experienced at the national level increased, trust in members of one’s ingroup increased, but trust in members of outgroups decreased. Functional Specificity in Threat Responding Together, these studies help to develop a deeper understanding of variation in responding to threats of violence. In the past, distinct lines of research have proposed associations between threats of violence and either aggression or affiliation, without a clear distinction about the circumstances under which each re￾sponse would be expected. The present findings suggest that these varied responses are functionally tuned to the perceived availabil￾ity of affiliative resources. People seem to prepare themselves to act in socially avoidant ways when dealing with members of unfamiliar outgroups—who are relatively unlikely to provide in￾strumentally protective resources and, indeed, might pose threats of danger themselves— but they appear to act in socially affiliative ways when they have a familiar group with which to aggregate. Additionally, there seem to be important individual differences in the extent to which people seek out affiliation following threat. People from large families, for whom affiliation with close others may be a particularly salient or practiced response to threat, appear more likely to modulate their agreeableness toward both familiar and unfamiliar others. Thus, these studies indicate that aggregation and affiliation are not general responses to threats of violence but, rather, are specific to both current social conditions (e.g., familiar vs. unfamiliar others) and to the particular individual in the situ￾ation (e.g., a person from a large vs. small family). The current findings also add to an emerging literature on the distinctiveness of different threat-management systems. In a recent review of human responding to threats of disease and violence, researchers found that these two threats were functionally engaged by different environmental cues, had different emotional compo￾nents, led to different inferences about others, and were associated with different behavioral inclinations (Neuberg et al., 2011). The present investigation builds on this research by highlighting the distinction between disease threats and threats of violence in biasing personality characteristics. Whereas earlier research dem￾onstrated that threats of disease can lead to general social avoid￾ance, we show that responses to threats of violence are more specific—that they lead to can lead to avoidance or affiliation, depending on the social conditions of the situation. Biasing Personality Characteristics In Studies 1–3, threats of violence were consistently related to agreeableness but not other personality characteristics. Conscien￾tiousness was correlated with threats of violence experienced at the national level but was not related to chronic perceptions of threat or temporary exposure to threats. Extroversion was related to chronic perceptions of threat but not to national experiences of threat or temporary experiences of threat. Finally, openness to experience and neuroticism were not associated with threat of violence in any of the studies. Together, these results highlight the unique relation be￾tween agreeableness and threats of violence—a relation that is con￾ceptually coherent given the close connections between agreeableness and both interpersonal cooperation and conflict. Traditional approaches to personality have often focused on the stability of personality characteristics over time— demonstrating that personality characteristics are heritable, arise early in devel￾opment, are consistent from situation to situation, and are consis￾tent over the course of the life span (Asendorpf & van Aken, 2003; Carey, 2003; Goldberg, 1993; Jang et al., 1996; John et al., 1994; Loehlin et al., 1998). However, other researchers have advocated that personality characteristics can shift in their expression as a function of developmental experiences and in response to subtle situational vari￾ation (Funder, 2006; Mischel, Shoda, & Mendoza-Denton, 2002; Mortensen et al., 2010; Schaller & Murray, 2008). Indeed, incorpo￾rating situational factors into the investigation of personality charac￾teristics is useful, because people can be characterized by both stable individual differences in their personality characteristics and by dis￾tinctive and stable patterns of situation– behavior interactions (Mis￾chel & Shoda, 1995; Mischel et al., 2002). These findings contribute to a growing body of literature exam￾ining those situation– behavior interactions (Funder, 2006; Mortensen et al., 2010). Here, we show that some of the variation in personality characteristics can be linked to threats of violence. In doing so, we underscore the possibility that variation in person￾ality characteristics and their behavioral manifestations can be functional, rather than random, and that a range of factors, from the conditions of the local environment, such as temporarily threaten￾ing situations, to national-level conditions, such as military spend￾ing, can influence one’s personality. The results of Study 3 suggest different effects on agreeableness depending on the potential targets of that agreeableness. Given that, one might wonder why we observed main effects of threat on agreeableness in the first two studies. One possibility is that when people rate their agreeableness, they think by default about their agreeableness toward familiar others. To examine this possibility, we asked a separate group of participants to rate themselves on the Big Five dimensions, and then to rate, on a 7-point scale, whether they had been thinking about how they acted around strangers (a) versus how they acted around friends and family (7). For agree￾ableness, there was a tendency to be significantly above the mid￾point of the scale (M
4.95, p .001), indicating that when people typically respond to Big Five agreeableness items they are THREATS OF VIOLENCE AND AGREEABLENESS 631 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.