Aggression Flashcards
Aggression is defined as
Aggression is defined as any behaviour intended to injure or harms another living being who is
motivated to avoid such treatment. Hostile aggression has the explicit goal of harming the other
person (e.g., beating somebody up to “teach them a lesson”), whereas for instrumental aggression
harming another is the means to some end (e.g., beating somebody up to steal their wallet). Early on
Freud proposed that human aggression stems from an innate ‘Death Instinct’, Thanatos, which is in
opposition to a ‘Life Instinct’, Eros. Thanatos is initially directed at self-destruction, but later in
development it becomes redirected outwards towards other people. Like the sexual urge, which
stems from Eros, an aggressive urge stemming from Thanatos builds up from bodily tensions, and
needs to be expressed. Part of the idea therefore is that aggression builds up naturally and must be
released. The ethologist Lorenz argued in his book On Aggression (1966) that aggression has
survival value. An animal is considerably more aggressive towards other members of its species,
which serves to distribute the individuals and/or family units in such a way as to make the most
efficient use of available resources, such as sexual selection and mating, food and territory.
Catharsis Hypothesis
Both Freud and Lorenz suggested that aggression needs to be acted upon from time to time in order
for the aggression to subside, which describes the Catharsis Hypothesis. However, research has
shown that emotions are often derived from observations of one’s own behaviour (i.e., selfperception). Acting in an aggressive way therefore would convey to oneself that one must be feeling
especially angry, which would in fact amplify the aggression. Overall there is very little evidence
that catharsis is effective. In particular, Bushman, Baumeister and Stack (1999) found that people
who hit a punching bag, believing that it reduced stress, were more likely later to punish someone
who had transgressed them.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
One of the earliest theories of aggression proposed that aggression is caused by frustration, which is
defined as blocking goal-directed behavior (Dollard et al., 1939). In the Frustration-Aggression
Hypothesis Dollard and colleagues argued that aggression was always caused by some kind of
frustrating event or situation, and in turn, frustration invariably led to aggression. The frustrationaggression theory had considerable appeal but later research revealed that the basic hypothesis was
simplistic and far from a complete explanation for aggressive behaviour. One major flaw is the
theory’s loose definition of ‘frustration’ and the difficulty in predicting which kinds of frustrating
circumstance may lead to aggression. As will be reviewed below, there are many factors other than
frustration that can cause aggression and violence between people.
Excitation-Transfer Model
A later approach is Zillmann’s (1979) Excitation-Transfer Model. The expression of aggression (or
any other emotion, for that matter) is a function of arousal or excitation from another source and the
person’s interpretation of the arousal state, such that an aggressive response seems appropriate.
Zillmann suggests that this residual arousal transfers from one situation to another in a way that
promotes the likelihood of an aggressive response, especially if aggressive behaviour is well
established in someone’s usual repertoire. According to Zillmann, any experience that markedly
increases the level of overall excitation can therefore lead to unintended consequences. For example,
the extreme level of excitement that often occurs at football matches can easily turn into violence
between rival groups of fans.
Weapons Effect
Can the mere sight of a gun provoke a person to use it?
Can the mere sight of a gun provoke a person to use it? The Weapons Effect is a particular
phenomenon that can be accounted for by a neo-associationist approach. Berkowitz asked the
question, “Does the finger pull the trigger or the trigger pull the finger?” (Berkowitz & LePage,
1967). A confederate first gave shocks to participants (either 1 shock, or 7 shocks, to elicit more
anger in the latter case). Then they sat at a table that had a shotgun on it—or, in the control
conditions, badminton racquets or no objects. These items were supposedly part of a different study,
but the researcher had forgotten to put them away. The participant was supposed to decide what level
of electric shock to deliver to the confederate, and this was used to measure aggression. The
experimenter told participants to ignore the items on the table, but apparently they could not.
Participants who saw the guns gave more shocks than did participants in the control conditions when
they previously had received the high number of shocks. This work suggests that certain objects that
prime aggression can elicit it in combination with people feeling frustrated and angry.
Social Learning Theorists,
Based on operant learning principles a behaviour is maintained by rewards and punishments that are
actually experienced by the child. The idea of learning by vicarious experience, however, is a
contribution made by Social Learning Theorists, who argue that learning occurs through the
processes of modelling and imitation of other people. Bandura’s studies used a variety of
experimental settings to show that children will quite readily mimic the aggressive acts of others. In
particular, an adult makes a potent model, no doubt because children perceive their elders as
responsible and authoritative figures. Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) tested this idea in one study of
4- and 5-year-old children who watched a male or female adult play with an inflated Bobo doll.
Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963)
Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) tested this idea in one study of
4- and 5-year-old children who watched a male or female adult play with an inflated Bobo doll.
In the Live Condition the adult model came into the room where the child was playing and then
began to act aggressively towards the Bobo doll. The acts included sitting on the doll, hitting its
nose, banging it on the head with a mallet and kicking it around the room. The words used were ‘sock
him in the nose’, ‘pow’, ‘kick him’, ‘hit him down’ and the like. After this, the child was left to play
with the Bobo doll. In the Videotape Condition the same procedure was filmed on videotape for the
child to view. In the Cartoon Condition the model acted in the same way but was dressed in a cat
uniform, and the room was decorated as if it were in a cartoon. Finally, in the Control Condition the
child skipped all of these conditions and went directly to play with the Bobo doll. The results showed
that the children who watched an adult behave aggressively in any condition behaved more
aggressively later. The most effective condition for modelling aggressive behaviour was the live
sequence. However, the finding that the cartoon and videotaped conditions also increased imitative
aggression in children provided fuel for critics who argued that graphic presentations of violence in
films and television could have serious consequences for children’s later behaviour.
Mass Media
The impact of Mass Media on aggression has involved violent acts such as assault, rape and murder
as they are portrayed in films or television programmes, and in more interactive form in games.
Violent video games might even be more harmful than violent TV programs, for at least three
reasons. First, playing a video game is active, whereas watching a TV program is passive. Second,
video game players are more likely to identify with a violent character than TV watchers, especially
if the game involves a first-person shooter, where players have the same visual perspective as the
killer. Third, violent games directly reward players for violent behaviour by awarding points or by
allowing them to advance in the game. The evidence linking violent video games to aggression is
compelling. A comprehensive review found that violent games increase aggressive thoughts, angry
feelings, and aggressive behaviours and decrease empathic feelings and prosocial behaviours
(Anderson & Bushman, 2010). Similar effects were obtained for males and females, regardless of
their age, and regardless of what country they were from.
Physical environment
Several aspets of the Physical Environment have been reliably implicated in increasing levels of affression, including, heat, crowding and noise. Harries and Stadler (1983) examined the incidence of aggravated assault in Dallas over the twelve moths of 1980. Assaults were more evident when it was hotter and more humid than normal, but not when it was excessively hot and humid.
Graphically, the relationship between heat and aggression follows an inverted U-curve: as the temperature rises, so does aggression, at least to a certain level. When it gets very hot, aggression levels out and then declines, a trend suggesting that extreme heat saps out energy. Cihn and Rotton (1997) tracked rates of physical assault according to temperature throughout each day over a two-year period in Minneapolis. Their data reflect an inverted U-curve. Cohn and Rotton also found that assaults were more frequent later in the evening than at other times.
Crowding that leads to fightig has long been recognised in avariety of animal species. For humans, crowding is a subjective state and is generally characterised by feeling that one’s personal space has been encroached. There is a distinction between the invasion of personal space adn a high level of population density, but in practical terms there is also an overlap. Urbanisation requries more people to sahre a limited amount of space, with elevated stress and consistent finding in studies of the penal environment. Feeling crowded made it morelikely that events in a UK prison were perceived as affressive and the protagonists as more hostile adn malevolent. Finally, in a similar manner as heat and crowding, noise also is a risk factor that can elicit affression.
One final question relates to whether some people are more aggressive than others. Is aggression something that remains stable throughout the life span. Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz and Walder(1984) showed that children who showed high levels of aggression at the age of 8 ended up with a greater number of criminal convictions at age 30, relative to children with lower levels of aggression. The pattern was similar for males and females, although females overall had fewer criminal physically aggressive than females. However, females are much more likely than males to engage in of acceptance, or inclusion within a group. Examples of relational aggression include gosiping, spreading rumons, withdrawing affection to get what you want, exluding someone from your circle of friends, and giving someone the ‘silent treatment’. Thus, both genders show aggression albeit of different types.
