provocation
Provocation (from the Latin provocare ' to cause', 'to challenge') refers to the targeted elicitation of behavior or a reaction in other people. Here, the provocateur acts consciously or unconsciously in a manipulative manner in such a way that the provoked person or group of people tends to show desirable behavior.
Origin of the term
The term (Latin provocatio ) goes back to Roman law and in antiquity referred to a legal appeal to the people's assembly, which was due to every Roman citizen who had been sentenced to death or corporal punishment by a state official (see right of provocation ). However, the term has changed significantly over time and is used very differently in different areas today.
Everyday term
A provocation is a behavior that is very common in everyday life, which is associated with exaggerations , rule violations (e.g. behavior that violates norms, deviance ) and which is intended to stimulate the person provoked to behave in a targeted manner. Violations of rules and norms are provoked as well, but also targeted behavior. The reason, purpose and direction of everyday provocations are generally broad.
Provocations can also be used to distance oneself from other people or to escalate situations , for example during demonstrations , strikes , etc. People who, on behalf of the state, are supposed to provoke illegal acts are called agent provocateur .
Medical term
In medicine , provocation refers to targeted tests in which certain stimuli are intended to cause symptoms of a suspected disease. Examples are provocation tests in allergology or photostimulation in neurology .
In test psychology , a provocation is a scientifically prepared situation that stimulates the person to be tested to behave to be examined. The behavior is recorded and evaluated. The provocation is a central part of projective tests .
Constitutional law
In the constitutional or military sense, provocation is to be understood as “... the art of creating a false alibi and imposing responsibility for decisions on other states. Provocations are rarely investigated because the sources are almost always inadequate and falsified, and because most historians lack the operational knowledge without which they are unable to untangle the tangle of false information. By neglecting this essential topic a dangerous distortion of the historical picture arises ... ”. So the US-American historian Stefan S. Possony in a chapter of his book On the Coping with the War Guilt Question under the title The noble art of provocation .
Provocation in art and creativity
In art , too , provocation is deliberately used, for example in modernism in the Futurism of around 1910 and since the 1960s in the styles of Fluxus and Happening, or in performances such as the Viennese Actionists .
A creativity technique by Edward de Bono is called "(Mental) Provocation". Here, properties of a thing or state of affairs are consciously changed in order to initially produce absurd, unrealistic or otherwise unusual consequences. Starting from these, one tries in the following to get new results.
