Aggression Flashcards
How is aggression defined? What are two types of aggression?
Physical or verbal behaviour intended to hurt someone.
Physical (body) and social aggression (feelings or relationships)
What is hostile aggression? What about instrumental aggression?
Hostile aggression is driven by anger and it’s not usually planned, not meant to achieve anything, just displaying aggression, the opposite of instrumental, which is premeditated.
What are some theories related to aggression?
Biological: evolutionary, biochemical (testosterone, alcohol or diet)
Frustration
Learned behaviour (socialized by family, community or society)
What is the evolutionary approach to aggression?
Intrasexual (securing a mate)
Intersexual (jealousy)
What did Wilson & Daly found?
Men were both the aggressors and victims in most situations. This tell us that men tend to be more physically aggressive.
What did Pazda, Prokop, & Elliot found?
They found that, by simply wearing red, that elicit a more hostile by other women.
Why is the participants face blurred on Pazda face?
So her attractiveness would not be a confound, as attractiveness also elicits a sense of threat and hostility.
What are the limitation of Pazda’s findings?
Different cultures have different attributions to the color red
Other color’s effect
If it depends on the clothing and attractiveness
Sample was university students, thus relationships were unstable
What can you confidently conclude from Pazda’s study?
That the color red increases cognitive arousal and spikes the heart rate.
What does testosterone brings?
A higher tendency for aggressive behaviour.
What is the interesting thing about Geniole et al. study?
The placebo effect on telling people that they have higher aggressive tendencies, they will report it as such.
What did Carrie et al. demonstrated in 2010?
That aggression is a handshake between nature vs nurture, when people are rewarded for their aggression, they are more likely to repeat it, the testosterone only exacerbates. PSAP. Aggression on the keyboard, provoked and not.
What’s other biochemical influences besides testosterone in aggression?
Alcohol and diet.
What did Taylor and Gammon find in 1975?
Intoxicated subjects initiated a higher levels of attack than the non-intoxicated subjects in the threatening situation. Alcohol-induced aggression appears to be a function of the interaction of alcohol consumption and the degree of threat or provocation.
How does diet affect aggression?
Foods make you feel different ways, poorer diets (higher in trans fat, greater amounts of sweetened drinks, lower omega-3 fatty acids) are associated with aggressive behaviour.
What is frustration?
The perception that you are being prevented from obtaining a goal.
What is the frustration-aggression theory?
Frustration will increase the probability of an aggressive response.
What exacerbates the frustration-aggression theory?
How close you are to reaching your goal, makes frustration greater
Unexpected frustration
Relative deprivation, feeling deprived, e.g. being on a diet
Aggressive cues, having things or people that are aggressive in the room with you, e.g. gun, bigot.
What decreases the likelihood of frustration leading to aggression?
Understandable frustration
Apologies
Accepting responsibility
Making amends
What did Harris found in 1974?
The closer you are to the front of the line, the more frustrated you get when someone cuts the line, thus more likely to get aggressive.
Affected by if the confederate is a man or a woman, if the participant is a man or a woman, if the confederate were wearing low x high status clothing and if they said “excuse me” or not.
What is relative deprivation?
Perception that a person is less well off than others to whom one compares oneself to.
What did Berkowitz and LePage found in 1967?
Just by having a weapon in the room with people, they exhibited more on edge, to be aggressive behaviour. This is due to the universal symbolism of threat.
What is Bandura Bobo’s doll experiment?
He put a kid observing an adult either behaving aggressively towards the doll or calmly play with it. Then he observed the behaviour of the child afterwards, they copied the behaviour. Closer imitation when same gender. Social learning was demonstrated. Later he redid the experiment with TV added to it.
What is an aspect on Bandura’s experiment that spun out of control?
Violent media. It has been debunked that certain violent media increase violent behaviour, e.g. video games. We imitate people that are similar to or close to us.
Why are kids more imitative with same gender adults?
Because they’re in the ingroup.
What are some factors that influence aggression?
Aversive incidents (pain, heat, attack)
Arousal (if you were alrd overstimulated)
Aggression cues
Media influences (porn, video games)
Group influences
What was the experiment showed in the video on video games?
They had people play two different games and hypothesized, based on priming, that the recognition speed would be higher for objects related to the genre. Negative priming was found. Limitation was that it was a 8-bit game, while nowadays it looks a lot more realistic.
What are limitations in studies that link aggression to video games?
Ineffective lab tests of aggression
Weak correlation
What is the catharsis hypothesis?
Hypothesis that venting one’s anger will produce a positive improvement in one’s psychological state.
What are some strategies that can be used to reduce aggressive behaviour?
Control anger or frustration
Communication and problem solving
Modeling nonagressive behaviour
Reinforcement of nonagressive behaviour, setting realistic expectations
Building empathy.
What did Zbigniew and Romano found?
They investigated the link between personality traits (narcissism and self-esteem) and violent video games choices. Results showed higher on the aggression scale, the more violent video games they reported playing.
