Aggression

Question 1

Aggression

Answer 1

Behaviour aimed at hurting others

Question 2

Instrumental aggression

Answer 2

Aggression aimed at achieving a goal (physical)

Question 3

Relational aggression

Answer 3

Aggression aimed at harming others interpersonal relationships e.g exclusion and gossip

Has been linked to poor ToM

Question 4

Antisocial behaviour

Answer 4

Disruptive or hostile behaviour that violates rules or conventions of society

Question 5

Conduct problems

Answer 5

A more generic term to cover aggressive and antisocial behaviours

Question 6

Development of aggression and other antisocial behaviours

Answer 6

0-12m: snatching etc

18m: physical aggression can begin and increase until 2/3 as language develops and aggression becomes more verbal

Question 7

Aggression and neurological deficits

Answer 7

Many aggressive children have neurological deficits such as ADHD

Problems with attention make it difficult to process all info of a situation before reactions

Also correlated with prenatal stress or physical abuse

Question 8

Bandura and the Bobo doll (1961)

Answer 8

Had children either watch an adult play aggressively with a doll or play normally and then were taken to a room full of nice toys and told they couldn’t play there and taken to the room with other toys including the Bobo doll.

Those in aggressive condition imitated the behaviour even of unusual aggressive behaviours.

Boys were more physically aggressive and boys and girls used equal number of verbal aggressive acts.

It’s now been criticised for ecological validity and ethical standards.

Question 9

Characteristics of aggressive and antisocial behaviour

Answer 9

Difficult temperament and lack of self-regulatory skills from young age

High activity level, irritability and delinquency

Poor emotion recognition particularly anger and fear - reduced empathy (maybe poor ToM)

Hostile attribution bias

Question 10

What are the two types of aggression?

Answer 10

Reactive aggression: emotionally driven antagonistic aggression sparked by ones perception that other people’s motives are hostile

Proactive aggression: unemotional and aimed at fulfilling a need or desire.

Question 11

What are the origins of aggression and antisocial behaviour?

Answer 11

Biological:
> genetics (twin studies)
> hormones (testosterone)

Parenting:
>insecure attachment 
>harsh parenting style 
>poor monitoring 
>exposed to frequent abuse 
>low income 

Peers:
>similar in aggression and escalate behaviour

Media:
>violent TV and video games

Question 12

Cloninger et al (1982)

Answer 12

Ran a study on 862 males adopted at birth and found that biological parent criminality quadrupled the risk of child criminality in a non criminal home.

When both the biological parent and the adoptive parent have rates of criminality the child’s criminality increased ten fold which shows the interaction of both is a strong risk factor.

Question 13

Gershoff et al (2012)

Answer 13

Conducted a large study on different families in America and found that spanking predicted aggression across all ethnic families.

Question 14

Passive gene-environment correlation

Answer 14

Harsh or punitive parents may possess a gene that is passed onto the child and therefore a genetic factor may unlike this pattern

Indirect effect

Question 15

Costello et al (2003)

Answer 15

Conducted a longitudinal study in which a casino opened and so 14% of people were out of poverty and found that rates of conduct problems reduced in these 14% of people but not those that remained in poverty.

Question 16

Gunter et al (2002)

Answer 16

Conducted a natural experiment of Tv introduction to an island community on St Helena. Those that spent more time watching violent TV were rated as more aggressive.

But is this just because those more aggressive individuals prefer violent content as the findings were non significant when controlling for pre- TV aggression