Study
1 revealed an individual’s ecology drives their cognitions when primed with an
image they perceive as aggressive; if an individual has an ability to flee the
situation, they will endorse flight action semantics, while an individual that
does not have this ability will endorse fight action semantics. However, the
following studies indicate that individuals might be prone to endorsing fight
action semantics even when they have the option to endorse the opposite. The
article though, does not provide a satisfactory operational definition of RHP,
resource holding potential, which was implicated in studies 2a and 2b. What actually
comprises an individual’s RHP? The article assesses RHP by asking the participant
if they would engage in a confrontation, indicating on a Likert-type scale,
with a picture of a black man (other races were presented, but were not interested).
The authors then deem this satisfactory evidence of an individual that has a
high RHP (willing to confront) or low RHP (unwilling to confront). This
however, does not seem satisfactory, especially if they want to establish
distancing behavior or closing in behavior as a source of individual
differences as a result of subliminal priming. Hopefully, future research in
this area would expand upon RHP; specifically, what information is accessed to
determine an individual’s RHP. Does the individual’s immediate ecology
contribute to this assessment, or is it the environment they grew up or reside
in? Is this a self-assessment of perceived strength by the individual and their
potential enemy? Or does RHP depend mostly on the size and strength of
potential enemy? This would be an interesting avenue to explore, as it provides
information to when an individual might be the exception: when a person would
choose to fight instead of flight.
