Aggression Flashcards
Aggression
Physical or mental
Intention to harm
Institutionalised aggression
aggression that is given formal or informal recognition and social legitimacy by being incorporated into rules and norms
agentic state
a frame of mind thought by Milgram to characterise unquestioning obedience in which people as agents transfer personal responsibility to the person giving orders
nature-nurture controversy
classic debate about whether genetic or environmental factors determine human behaviour.
Scientists generally accept that it is an interaction of both.
psychodynamic theory:
aggression as a healthy release for primitive survival instincts
biosocial: biological + social (learned)
frustration-aggression hypothesis
excitation transfer model
hate crimes
A class of violence against members of a stereotyped minority group
Hostile aggression
behavior intended to harm another, either physically or psychologically, and motivated by feelings of anger and hostility
Instrumental aggression
behavior intended to harm another in the service of motives other than pure hostility (for example, to attract attention, acquire wealth, and to advance political and ideological causes)
Gender and aggression
men and women do not differ in aggressiveness; they differ in the form of expression
Men express aggression through physical pain and injury
Women express aggression through exclusion, psychological and verbal abuse [relational aggression]
media effects - film
Moderating Role
- High trait aggressive individuals were more likely to choose a violent film
- High trait aggressive individuals felt more angry after viewing the violent videotape
- Videotape violence was more likely to increase aggression in high trait aggressive individuals
Media effects (longitudinal) - TV
Children’s consumption of media violence early in the school year predicted higher verbally aggressive behavior, higher relationally aggressive behavior, higher physically aggressive behavior, and less prosocial behavior later in the school year.
Measure of aggressive behaviour
- Physical aggression subscale
- Relational aggression subscale
- Verbal aggression item
- Prosocial behavior subscale
Hostile attribution bias / social information processing
interpretation bias in which individuals are more likely to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile than benign
media effects - songs
- increased the proportion of word fragments that were filled in to make aggressive words
- more aggressive interpretations of ambiguously aggressive words
- increased the relative speed with which people read aggressive vs. nonaggressive words
- increased feelings of hostility without provocation or threat
* even for humorous violent songs
media effects - video games
1. Students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school engaged in more aggressive behavior
- Amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college
* even brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants
A Moderator-Variable Time-Series Analysis
inverted u-shape
mildly high temperature - salient - misattribution (more likely to attribute heat-induced arousal to another person’s action (the insult).)
obvious high temperature - more likely to make a conscious effort to inhibit aggressive impulses if one knows that heat caused one’s discomfort.
crowding
- a subjective state
- characterised by feeling that one’s personal space has been encroached
- urbanisation: elevated stress and potentially antisocial consequences
- more accurate measure: household density (persons per house) and neighbourhood density (detached housing vs high-rise housing)
> positive correlation
sports-related violence
“soccer hooliganism”: stereotyped images of football fans on the rampage
highly complex: ritualised aggression over time
Belief in a just world
Belief that the world is a just and predictable place where good things happen to ‘good people’ and bad things happen to ‘bad people’
> victim blaming
Gender and ethnic asymmetries
underlie partner abuse:
- men: sexual assaults
- women: self-defence
- diff ethnic groups: ‘do gender’ differently, inc. perceptions of when it is appropriate to use violence
people hurt those closest to them:
1) abuse syndrome: factors of proximity, stress (source of arousal) and power (traditional nuclear families, favouring the men) that are
associated with the cycle of abuse in some families
2) learnt pattern of aggression
3) high alcoholic consumption
General aggression model
Anderson’s model that includes both personal and situational factors, and cognitive and affective processes (+ arousal) in accounting for different kinds of aggression
(thoughtful / impulsive)
Frustration-aggression theory
Frustration leads to aggression
Fear of retaliation can displace aggression
Aggression reduces tension generated by frustration
Frustration interference with goal-seeking at its proper time in a behavioral sequence, and is directly proportional to
- Goal importance
Amount of satisfaction the person anticipates before a goal is blocked
2. Severity of goal interference
The more completely the person is prevented from achieving the goal
3. Frequency of goal interference
The more frequently the person is blocked from achieving the goal
4. Goal proximity
The closer the individual is to achieving the goal
Displacement
focusing aggression on something other than source of frustration
Unless frustration is intolerable, we delay aggression and direct that to some safe targets, which are similar to the source of frustration
Cognitive neoassociationist view
Primary antecedents of aggression is aversive arousal or negative affect, e.g., anger, sadness
> Frustration is only one source of aversive arousal
Can react to aversive arousal (negative affect) with either aggression or escape / withdrawal
> depending on cognitive appraisal (e.g., attribution) of the situation
Excitation transfer theory
- interpret ambiguous physiological arousal by searching for cues in the environmental cues to label the physiological state––to identify the particular emotion we are experiencing
- Excitation (or arousal) that is evoked in one situation (from a given drug, action, or event) can transfer to later situations.
- As a consequence, emotional reactions in a setting might be amplified because of leftover arousal from an earlier event.
- Most likely to occur when we are not aware of our residual arousal and when we misattribute the source of the arousal.
- The misidentification of arousal, or excitation transfer, causes a more intense response than would have occurred had you not been physiologically aroused in the first place.
Social learning theory
Aggression does not necessarily stem from negative affect
All social behaviors are learned
> Aggressive behaviors can be learned vicariously, without rehearsal or award
> learning by direct experience
Acquiring a behaviour because we were rewarded for it.
> learning by vicarious experience
Acquiring a behaviour after observing that another person was rewarded for it.
The Bobo doll experiment
Weapon effect
Cues to aggression
Aggressive behaviors are learned in associations with specific cues
Because aggression is due to learning, aggressive behavior is susceptible to reinforcement or rewards
> Children watching aggressive behavior being punished are less likely to imitate them
culture of honour
a culture that is defined by strong concerns about one’s own and others’ reputations, leading to sensitivity to slights and insults and a willingness to use violence to avenge any perceived wrong or insult
Southern culture of honor
a violent response is “extremely justified”
Evolutionary theory
Aggression helps reproduction
survival of the fittest favors aggressive men
More likely to get killed by non-blood related people (eg. spouse, step children, nonrelatives)
Step-parents are more likely than natural parents to kill their children
Aggressiveness can be transmitted genetically
e.g., can selectively breed highly aggressive mice
> aggression inhibition chemical
There are differences in rates of aggression among societies
> if similar selection pressures exist across societies, should expect similar aggressiveness
Marked changes of rates of aggression within society over short periods of time
> too short for genetic influence to take effect
