The 1ac viewing China as a threat to leadership increases aggressions.

Despite Axelrod’s assertions that the long-term adaptiveness of reactive aggression is poor, certain ecological contexts have been found to encourage hostile attributions and reactive aggression in response to ambiguous provocations. For example, rhesus macaque mothers who hold high dominance ranks socialize their 9-mo-old infants to display a pattern of high vigilance to threatening faces, probably as a short-term adaptive strategy to enable the offspring to maintain high rank (2). In the US South, a unique “culture of honor” promotes vigilance toward provocateurs, perceptual readiness to attribute hostile intent to others, and retaliatory aggression in response to being dishonored (3). Qualitative accounts of urban violence among minority males also point toward the importance of retaliating against being “dissed,” as in disrespected (4). Recent “Stand Your Ground” laws in the United States excuse retaliation against a perceived provocateur.

A pattern of hypervigilance to threat, hostile attribution of intent, and reactive aggression in response to provocation often comes at a cost to an individual within a society and to that society’s long-term health and well-being. A large body of psychological research in the United States indicates that, when an individual attributes hostile intent to a peer provocateur, the individual is likely to become anxious and escalate reactive aggression, leading in turn to chronic aggressive behavior problems (5). Children who consistently make hostile attributions about others have been shown to escalate aggression in response to provocation, to become chronically anxious, and to increase their aggressive behavior problems over time and grow into violent adults (6).

How do we reconcile the universality of Axelrod’s tit for tat pattern of benign attributions and cooperation with known ecological group differences in chronic aggressive behavior rates? A social ecological model that embeds behavior in a widening circle of ecological contexts (e.g., family, community, culture) posits that a child’s cultural-ecological context of local norms, values, and affordances will influence that child’s attention and attribution processes, which, in turn, will account for that child’s aggressive behavior (ecological context → child hostile attribution bias → child aggression) (7). We assert that some environments socialize a pattern that consists of high vigilance to threat, hostile attributions of another’s intent, and reactive aggression. The reasons for group differences in socialization patterns are beyond the scope of this study but likely grow in response to local environmental challenges such as genuine threat from outside groups, political conflict, and relative economic disadvantage, and are perpetuated through transmission across generations.