7. Inter sexual Aggression Core

Question 1

Define Agression

Answer 1

any form of behaviour directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment” (Baron & Richardson, 1994, p, 7)

Question 2

what are types of aggression?

Answer 2

verbal vs physical

• Direct (where aggressor is clearly identifiable to the victim) versus indirect (aggressor not visible)
• Instrumental (targeted towards a goal) vs. expressive (internal emotional state)

Question 3

what is the equation for why aggression may occur

Answer 3

potential(aggression) = (p. rewards – p. costs)

Question 4

how can the equation for aggression be used to explain sex differences?

Answer 4

o Males’ rewards vs females costs (males generally get rewards whilst females get costs)

Question 5

males tend to be more aggressive, but what are some similarities? And what can we infer from this?

Answer 5

• High Correlation between sexes over
o Regions and nations
o Age (fairly well) is v hard to see across age as homicide is so much lower than men but spike in early 20s for both.
• Similar developmental predictors (Gotfredson & Hirschi, 1990)
o Social Class/ SES
o Insecure attachment
o Parental discord/ conflict and separation
o Poor school achievement
• So underlying psychology in terms of what is driving men and women to aggressive behaviour seems to be fairly similar.

Question 6

what are differences in M and F aggression?

Answer 6

1) men are more aggressive

2) this magnitude increases with the severity of the aggression.

Question 7

study showing gender differences in male and female aggression

Answer 7

• Archer 2009- meta analysis- sex differences in types of aggression for different methods of assessment.
o Experimental (sudo- create a trigger and see response)- medium effect physical agg small for verbal
o Self reports- large physical small verbal
o Group observations- medium/ large physical very small verbal
o Peer reports- large physical medium verbal
o Teacher reports- small to medium both
o Combined- get very large for physical and medium for verbal
• So see a fairly consistent picture for male aggression bias particularly for physical aggression.

Question 8

evidence that magnitude of gender difference increases with gender

Answer 8

• Archer (2014)
• Indirect= no sex difference, verbal= small, physical= medium, criminal assault/ weapons= large, homicide= very large
• Putting this into context… typical physiological sex differences fall in range with verbal (small meaningful). When it comes to sex difference between criminal assault/ weapons it is about same as gender difference between emotion decoding and for homicide is about the same as height so is blindingly obvious.

Question 9

stats that support men being more violent

Answer 9

• 89% of violent rime is committed by men (US Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal sentencing records: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999…)
• > 90% of same-sex homicides are male-male (Daly & Wilson, 1998, homicide) female female homicide is rare

Question 10

but what can we say about thresholds and M and F aggression?

Answer 10

Differences in rates of aggression combined with similarities in predictors of aggression suggest a threshold difference rather than two sex-specific aggression systems. It is not that they are separate things but males and females have different thresholds of when levels of aggression are elicited.

Question 11

what explanation for male aggression focuses on Bateman’s principle?

what supports this?

Answer 11

Daly and Wilson (1988)- they really focused in on Bateman’s principle of fitness variance and mate competition.
• Rank leads to reproductive success
• =high risk/ high gain
• Thus, if you can use physical aggression to gain rank then yes it is high risk (death) but the benefit of dominating matings is really high.

disproportionate effect of winners Dogon data Brown et al. men at top not many of them getting high rates of reproductive success but because they are they are disproportionately represented in the gene pool in the following generation. So you don’t need a lot of males for their genotypes to be disproportionately represented in the gene pool.

Question 12

research supporting idea of aggression and rank in primates

Answer 12

Cowlishaw & Dunbar (1991) review where they looked across species if you include sub adults (juveniles) then association between rank and reproductive success was always positive. If you exclude juveniles (because they are not fully active in terms of mating yet), then you do get some inverse results for high rank males within their own group, but still greater tendency in primates for high rank males to be achieving greater reproductive success.

Question 13

research supporting idea of aggression and rank in humans

Answer 13

Perusse (1986)- found that males who are higher ranked within companies tend to have (not greater reproductive success) but greater potential reproductive success ie. they slept with more women but contraception was getting in the way of reproduction. Not a fantastic study
Josephson’s Mormons- clear evidence that achieving rank in hierarchical structures scenario is associated with greater reproductive success.
BM’s Kipsigis- males who acquire more wealth in terms of herds have more wives and offspring.
• Adaptive aggression- securing scarce resources
• Routes to status via Resource holding potential (PHP); Key point however is that there are multiple routes to success. Modern humans have jobs, money (evolutionary novel). Outside of west potentially we have hunting prowess, but we see a lot of male-male competition with wealth and jobs.
• Routes to status where RPH is low?

Question 14

what may socio-economic effects have to do with aggression and support for this.

Answer 14

In every data set you look at aggression is highest in late teens/ early twenties ie. aggression is greatest when men tend not to have high status jobs, males feel in competition with one another, a lack of resources and want to mate thus aggression may come out more than when older and have more resources on your side.

• Controlling for age, same-sex violence/ violent crime are more frequent among:
o Non-married men and then unemployed (Daly and Wilson, 1988)
o When unemployment is high homicide is high- suggesting that financial pressures are effecting male-male violent behaviour.
o Butchart & Engstrom (2002)- essentially looked at inequality- GDP (how wealthy), GINI (how distributed is the money) in teens and early twenties. Can explain up to 70% of homicide rates by looking at how wealthy a country is and its inequality. High rates of inequality (the harder it is for some to acquire wealth) the higher the rates of aggression.

Question 15

what can reduce aggression?

Answer 15

• Becoming a father/ being partnered is also associated with a reduction in being criminally violent. Controlling for age, same-sex violence/ violent crime are more frequent among non-married men and the unemployed and non-fathers than fathers (Boothroyd & Cross, 2016). Only focused on forms of theft- robbery (where you have to physically confront someone) to larceny (no confrontation). Of convicted thefts a much lower proportion are violent for the women than men and within men and women parents are much less likely 90-60% in men for violent theft. Partnered men show sig lower rates than being violently criminal whether they are a father or not but having kids reduces it more.

Question 16

how has it been argued that paternity has a role in reducing violence?

Answer 16

• Has been argued that all of this can be explained by thinking about much broader vertebrate patterns in T as a regulator of male-male competitive behaviour which is targeted to achieve matings.

Question 17

Outline Challenge hypothesis

Answer 17

• Wingfield et al. (1990) Challenge hypothesis essentially argued that if T is regulating male-male competitive behaviour and is centred around mating behaviour then what we should see is that patterns of T within a species should follow whatever the reproductive system of that species is. E.G. spikes in T as pair is forming but if there is no remating then T should drop and stay lower through repeat mating season. If there are less males to compete with you wont see much T duing early mate search phase. If re-nesting (break up pair bond for another) then should see another spike in T at this point. If species where lots of male challenge see spikes in Testosterone spikes consistently. Basically argued that Patterns of T should be predictable based on the mating environment of a species.

Question 18

support for challenge hypothesis in non-humans?

Answer 18

o Muller & Wrangham (2004) using chimps they compared female oestrus (maximal swelling) increase in charging displays in males sig increase in chses and attacks between males, during these days of maximal swelling T levels in group were sig higher (really obvious female fertility). When females were most fertile ie. when most worth fighting with other males most worth fighting other males.

o Ricon et al. (2017) Barbary macaques- unlike chimps who have a cycle they have a mating season where all females come into oestrus at the same time. T starts to increase just before the mating season starts and then decreases post mating season. A few weeks before mating season ranks become unstable. Aggression rates higher in mating season and whilst mating dyads are forming. T here is very temporally aligned with when males are competing with each other to form mating pairs.

Question 19

who reviewed challenge hypothesis and what were their hypotheses?

Answer 19

o	Archer (2006) Review in humans:
	 Six hypotheses to understand if challenge hypothesis was useful for understanding aggression in humans. This is what challenge hypothesis would predict

 H1- There is no increase in aggression at puberty
 H2a- Men respond to sexual arousal with increased T-
 H2b- Men respond to competition with increased T- yes
 H3- The T response to challenge increases with aggression
 H4- T levels are lower among paternal men
 H5- Aggressive dominance is correlated with T levels – same as H3
 H6- T is associated with alternative life history strategies.

Question 20

what can be said in generally about men responding to sexual arousal with increased T?

Answer 20

hard to measure but some evidence to support this

Question 21

exploring competition winners and losers- what found?

Answer 21

Zilioli & Watson (2014)

Showed that T levels remained stable across competition in winders but decrease significantly for competition losers.

Question 22

support for the notion that women do have things to fight about in humans

Answer 22

Borgerhoff Mulder talk 21st Nov 2017- studied Pimbwe women where pair bonds are v unstable and men are coming and going women’s reproductive success increases with a greater number of sexual partners. (other way round than normal). Women RS is following a pattern would expect of men- so clearly women do have reason to compete

Question 23

support for the notion that aggression for women does have benefits

Answer 23

Pusey et al (1997)- data in chimpanzees finding that the higher ranked females have more surviving offspring than lower rank female. Preferential resources but also because higher rank females can stress and harass the lower rank females and their offspring and occasionally kill the offspring- clear benefit in offspring survival.

Question 24

evidence to support the notion that when in competition females fight more in animals

Answer 24

Cheney et al 2012- Chacma baboons- very clear competition for the alpha males (infants sired by alpha males more likely to have own reproductive success). As the male to female sex ratio becomes more biased there is an increase in female specific aggression. Also as number of females increases the female mortality rate also increases presumably as a result of aggression. And if looking at social bonds between the females, high score= same groups formed and remain low= chopping and changing between affiliations- in chacma baboons the more females there are relative to males, the less stable the affiliations are again suggesting competition for males and resources is having an effect on females and their social bonds

Question 25

what can we say overall about violence in non-human primates?

Answer 25

Overall clearly we have comparative evidence that Female-female competition almost certainly exists in non-human primates and that there is reason for it to exist and it can influence the mortality of them and their offspring

Question 26

who devised ‘a few good men’ theory and outline

Answer 26

Ann Campbell did a lot of work in the early 80s where she looked at girl gangs in new York and one of the themes that emerged is that there is a relatively limited number of good men. High rates of male unemployment and incarceration and thus female competition for pair bonds is large.
A focus on males with money, not in prison and treating girls well- whatever happens with relationship at least you’re treated well in it.
• ‘It’s hard to get a good man and girls grab any fella that treat you special…It’s just tight out here ‘cause we ain’t got nothing but girls, girls, girls an the guys got their pick. We just start fighting each other over the same giys” (Taylor, 1993)
More direct competition- fighting over reputation and competition over men not resources.

Question 27

If women do have things to fight about then why is it theorized that this is so much less common in females?

Answer 27

Campbell (1999)- argument was that it is to do with the need for maternal care of offpring- the single most important thing a woman can do in terms of raising offspring is to stay alive. Sear and Coall found a positive effect between mother being alive and child staying alive. There is no evidence that finds that a mother who dies doesn’t negatively effect child survival. Fathers are about 50/50 whether they are important or not dependant on environmental niche they are in.

see data on impact of mother’s death on infants

Question 28

data on impact of mother’s death on infants

Answer 28

Pavard et al. 2005

• Quebec records 1625-1759
• + 80k births studied
o Miscarriages and still births omitted (Obstetric problems)
o Infants dying within 28 days of birth omitted (Inherent viability problem)
o To rule out cross-infection children dying less than 2 weeks after the mother were omitted.
o Correction for ‘between family effects’ i.e. tendency for some mothers and their children to both be vulnerable to death
• Child mortality levels before a mother’s death were computed and used to adjust the odds ration for child mortality after the mother’s death.
• Found that if mother died neonatally the child was 5x more likely to die within first year if mother died postneonatally 4x likely for child to die in first year. Mother dies past this about 2.5x more likely to die being a toddler or early childhood. So bad, but particularly bad for early life

Question 29

Data comparing influence of losing a mother versus a father

Answer 29

Ache data

We do see a drop relative for dads but way bigger for the mother Hurtado and Hill.

Question 30

Data comparing influence of losing a mother versus a father

Answer 30

Ache data

We do see a drop relative for dads but way bigger for the mother Hurtado and Hill.

Question 31

what can we conclude about violence in terms of mothering

Answer 31

Pretty much worst thing for children is dying so the risk of aggression is high whereas for the males it is not important other members of the kin group than can supplement care. In all small scale societies. Very strong selection pressure against female aggression- women who engage in aggression are more likely to produce less offspring.

Question 32

what has been argued to be the mediator for aggression in women?

Answer 32

Argued that fear was a mediator for this- and this keeps a lid on female aggression as they worry about the consequences of behaviour.

thus.. expect to see sex differences in fear

Question 33

what two data sets show sex differences in fear?

Answer 33

Clinical- Marks 1987

Subjective beliefs in physical threat -Bettencourt and Miller, 1996

Physiological- McManis et al (2001) & Hermans et al (2008)

Question 34

Clinical fear differences in Males and females study

Answer 34

Marks (1987) – women are more likely to express more clinical levels of phobias to blood and animals direct physical threat. You do not see the difference in social phobias e.g. talking in public.

Question 35

subjective beliefs in physical threat differences in Males and females study

Answer 35

Meta-analyses of not just behavioural response but also perception that there may be aggressive retaliation….
“it appears that the more women’s fear of aggressive retaliation exceeds that of men, the larger the gender difference in aggression. The fact that differential appraisals of danger by male and female judges were related to aggressive responding is especially interesting given that (a) experimental inductions were objectively identical for female and male participants and (b) with any expectation that targets would have opportunities for retaliation” (Bettencourt and Miller, 1996)
So women felt more at risk of retaliation even when not the case

Question 36

physiological fear differences in Males and females study

Answer 36

McManis et al (2001)- look at the difference between pleasant and unpleasant stimuli that girls (children) have greater physiological response to seeing something highly unpleasant than boys (SCR & Greater startle)

Hermans et al (2007) T and stress response in women- can link fear response to T (startle reflex and skin conductance) women with T show less response to negative stimuli. No response in their self-reported arousal or disgust but there is a unconscious change.

Hermans et al (2008) threat stimuli. If you give people T not a placebo what see a stronger response to angry faces and weaponary amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex. Parts of brain that respond to threat are responding more strongly if they have been given T versus a placebo. Suggesting that the T is priming for action.

Question 37

what issue has been raised with fear

Answer 37

the question of whether it is fear or lack of impulsivity .

• Because..Fear can inhibit aggression directly via low-level motivational or affective effects (“freezing”, withdrawing, submitting).
• But…Fear is also developmental infrastructure for higher-level executive behavioural inhibition or ‘effortful control’ (Patterson & Newman, 1993: Derryberry & Bates, 1998)

Question 38

what has it been argued that fear does to girls in childhood?

Answer 38

• Girls’ early fear may make them good at acquiring inhibitory control of behaviour in adulthood ie. not impulsivity.

Question 39

correlations of fear and impassivity

Answer 39

• Fear and impulsivity correlate r=-.50 and both are associated with aggression (Eisenberg et al. 2001)

Question 40

what makes us think that male aggression could be related to impulsivity?

Answer 40

• Testosterone….
o Reduces inhibitory control in experimental rats (Svensson et al, 2003; Dolan et al 2001)
o Is higher in psychopaths (key feature is low inhibitory control)

Question 41

what is the problem with using inhibition

Answer 41

But problem with this is it is hard to pin down what people mean when they are talking about impulsivity….lots of different types of impulsivity:

e.g. failure to plan versus inability to withhold a prepotent response

hard to know where sex differences lie and which subtype potentially affects aggression and how

Question 42

define impulsivity

Answer 42

• “ A tendency to act spontaneously and without deliberation” (Carver, 2005)

Question 43

studies supporting sex differences in impassivity (main)

Answer 43

In children (Else-Quest et al., 2006) :

• very strong female effect bias towards girls being able to have more effortful control.
• Smaller bias towards males having a broader impassivity wanting to do things more.

In adults:
Meta-Analysis of sex differences in adult studies of impulsivity (Cross, Copping & Campbell, 2011)
• Effortful control by adulthood there are basically no sex differences
• Reward sensitivity- no sex difference
• Punishment sensitivity- “Usually I am more worried than most people that something might go wrong in the future” women are more fearful and punishment sensitive.
• Sensation seeking, risk taking- “ I like to do dangerous things”- men are more likely to report being risk taking. (active sensation seeking)
Men more likely to want to do dangerous things women more likely to report being very adverse to consequences of potential negative. These are lower level motivational factors.

Question 44

additional support for impassivity in gender differences

Answer 44

Campbell & Muncer (2009)

if you add in risky impulsivity the association between gender and physical aggression (goes from small effect size to 0. And same with verbal. So risky impulsivity is explaining the whole sex difference here in aggression.

Question 45

what form of aggression may females use and why

Answer 45

Indirect aggression

If you do not engage in direct/ verbal aggression then how do you compete with the people around you? Achieve goals without risk.

Question 46

define indirect aggression

Answer 46

“ a form of social manipulation where the target is attacked circuitously and the aggressor can therefore remain unidentified”

Question 47

what does Indirect aggression involve and what may it function to do?

Answer 47

• IA= involves ostracism (not talking), stigmatization (labelling) and character defamation (implicate something about them as a person). All can have social consequences.
• IA may function to exclude individuals from the group or to reduce their social standing/ mate value.
• They become less attractive as a social and sexual partner.

indeed seen in Primates- Low level harassment–> reproductive suppression –> reduced RS

Question 48

why is indirect aggression so effective for females?

Answer 48

• Female social networks are more intensive and less extensive than males
• They involve greater intimacy and self-disclosure
• Women provide more support to others than men
• Men seek support preferentially from wives, while women seek support from same sex friends.

• Under stress women cope by seeking emotional support from others more than men, d= -.20 (Tamres et al., 2002) when you damage social support you are damaging women’s ability to deal with social stressors.

Question 49

what are effects of Indirect aggression for the victim?

Answer 49

• Depression, loneliness, peer rejection, anxiety— particularly for girls (Eslea, 2005)

• Laboratory studies:
o Temporary social exclusion inducing this ‘flat’ affect, lethargy, slowing down of time, sense on meaninglessness (Twenge et al., 2002) all features of depression. Can temp induce feelings of depression.
• Girls rate IA as more harmful than boys and as more harmful than physical aggression (Galen & Underwood, 1997