Aggression Flashcards
What is the basis of the de-individuation argument for aggression?
De-individuation is a psychological state when someone loses the sense of self and takes on the identity of a social group. This is said to free the individual form the constraints of social norms.
What is private self-awareness according to de-individuation and how does it decrease and cause aggression?
Private self awareness is how we pay attention to ourself so this is the self critical and evaluative part of ourselves. This is reduced when part of a crowd as our focus is set outwards to the people around us so we are less self-critical and more open to do things.
What is public self-awareness according to de-individuation and how does it decrease and cause aggression?
Public self-awareness is how much we care about what other people think of us and this is reduced in crowds. This is due to the fact that we believe that we are anonymous as we are one among many and think people are less likely to judge us as a result we no longer care what other people think.
Outline the research support conducted by Karen Douglas and Craig McGarty (2001) for de-individuation
Douglas and McGarty studied aggressive behaviour in online communities. They found a strong correlation between anonymity and trolling - sending threading and/or hostile messages. The most aggressive messages were sent by the people who hid their real identity.
Outline the research conducted by Gergen’s ‘deviance in the dark study’ and explain how it counters the de-individuation explanation of aggression.
Gergen selected a group of eight participants whom did not know it each. They were all placed in a dark room and guaranteed that they would never meet each other again. This lead to the participants kissing and intimately touching each other. The study was then repeated and the participants were told they would meet afterwards - in this case the amount of kissing decreased dramatically. De-individuation would have predicted aggression to come out of this situation but instead the participants became sexual.
What are the four cognitive conditions needed for observational learning to take place in social learning theory? Give an anagram for it!
ARRM
A -Attention: the observer must pay attention to the model’s aggressive actions
R -Retention: the observer must be able to form a memory of how the behaviour is formed
R -Reproduction: the individual must be able to act on their memory and perform the aggressive task
M -Motivation: the individual must have a reason behind wanting to this this aggression
Explain self-efficacy in terms of the social learning theory explanation of aggression. Give an example of self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is the confidence one needs to be able to perform a task. In terms of aggression someone will only perform a task if they confident it will end well for them. For a child this is like an infant taking toys off other kids through aggression and it works for them so they gain confidence, over time they are more predisposed to be aggressive since they have the confidence to do so.
Explain what Matti Virkkunen et al (1994) did and what they found out about serotonin and its link to aggression.
They compared levels of a serotonin breakdown product (so less serotonin) in the cerebrospinal fluid for impulsive and non-impulsive offenders. They found that impulsive defenders had less of the breakdown product and had more irregular sleep patterns. This is significant because serotonin regulates sleep patterns. Disturbance of this pattern strongly implies some disruption of serotonin functioning.
