Results: I asked the unwitting participants how many pizzas I should order. Once I got the total number, 4 large pizzas, I told my pizza delivery friend beforehand to only have 1 pizza delivered. Once I received the pizza, I tried to act out to my friends why we only got one pizza. The pizza delivery friend said that it may take several hours to get new pizzas since they are so busy. I brought the pizza in and the participants were visually angry. Over half had audible responses to the situation (‘Only one pizza?! What the hell?!’, ‘Do I have to go down there and kick their asses’, ‘This is bs’). The most interesting part is when I noticed the participants becoming angry over two in the group hogging three slices a piece. There was a very heated exchange between a person who had no pizza and one of the guys who had three slices. The guy who had none actually took a slice off the guy’s plate that had three slices and there was some heated screaming. I ended the experiment and told everyone that I ordered only one pizza on purpose and more was on the way. I stopped it because I didn’t want my friends to hurt each other and then told everyone the nature of my experiment. Afterwards I asked everyone one-on-one if they were upset over just one pizza and each said yes and 6/10 said they were ‘very pissed off’ or something similar at the guys who hogged all the pizza and were either willing to get food for themselves elsewhere, or ready to confront the two guys themselves if there wasn’t pizza anytime soon.
Discussion: In a very short amount of time, one pizza divided some very close friends. If the rationing of a simple resource, such as a pizza, can bring about the aggression I witnessed between my friends, how worse could it be with true starvation? There have been many times in human history where there have been riots, violent uprisings, and war over limited resources. These were two guys that were very close to hitting each other over some pizza. Both were having a great time watching the football games just before the delivery came. I think when there was an expectation of a basic need and it is cut off unexpectedly, aggression can arise. I don’t know these two individuals’ personal aggression levels beforehand but as a character witness I believe that they were good friends until one of them tried to take advantage of more pizza than his share. I think individuals can be very prone to aggression under circumstances they feel are outside of their control. Once power is taken away, they feel they have been taken advantage of. Almost everyone in the experiment was visually upset, over half spoke up about it, and two nearly came to violence. This clearly shows to me that limiting resources can cause acts of aggression.
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