Aggression L4 Ethological Approach

Question 1

What does the Ethological Approach to Aggression seek to understand?

Answer 1

• Seeks to understand the innate behaviour of animals by studying them in their natural environment
• Focus is to account for behaviours in terms of its adaptive value to specific species
• Ethologists believe that by looking at animal behaviour we can understand human behaviour

Question 2

What function is aggression given by ethologists?

Answer 2

• Has an adaptive function, it is seen in all animal species and believed to be an innate behaviour
• Due to it being innate it must be beneficial to the organism
  
  • Aggression can aid an organisms survival by protecting resources, e.g land and food, and can establish dominance hierarchies which allow access to resources such as females

Question 3

What does Lorenz suggest about Aggression?

Answer 3

• Aggression in animals is ritualistic
• This is more adaptive than direct aggression as symbolic aggression would help ensure the organism was not harmed
• Ritualistic aggression such as ‘teeth baring’ deters physical harm as a physical injury due to aggression could impair their ability to reproduce or even result in death

Question 4

What is the Innate Releasing Mechanism within the Ethological Approach?

Answer 4

• The IRM is a network of neurons in the brain which acts as an automatic biological response to stimuli
• An environmental stimulus, e.g facial expressions, triggers the IRM to release a sequence of behaviours
• The consequential aggressive behaviour is called the Fixed Action Pattern (FAP)

Question 5

According to Lea, what are FAP’s main 6 features?

Answer 5

1. Stereotypical, unchanging sequence of behaviours
2. Universal, same behaviour is found in every individual of its species
3. Unaffected by learning, same behaviour for all regardless of experience
4. ‘Ballistic’, an inevitable course of actions that cannot be altered until it is completed
5. Single purpose, the behaviour only occurs in a specific situation
6. It is a response to an identifiable sign stimulus

Question 6

What are Strengths of the Ethological Approach? (1)

Answer 6

• Fish clarting

Question 7

Fish clarting (+)

Answer 7

• Experimented with male sticklebacks who develop a red spot on their underside during mating season, males would attack other males who tried to enter their territory
• He attributed this to the red spot on their underside acting as an IRM, where the red spot (stimulus) would cause aggressive attack behaviour (FAP)
• He presented the male sticklebacks with a wooden model, if it had a red spot the male would attack, but without it would not, confirming the IRM and support for FAP

Question 8

What are Weaknesses of the Ethological Approach? (3)

Answer 8

• Cultural Relativism
• Not always ritualistic
• Not all fixed action patterns are fixed

Question 9

Cultural Relativism (-)

Answer 9

• Ethological assumes behaviour is innate and therefore should be uniform across all cultures
• Nisbett observed in a lab experiment where South American white males were more likely to act aggressive when insulted compared to white North American males in the same conditions
• Demonstrates cultural differences in aggression that the ethological explanation has not accounted for

Question 10

Not always ritualistic (-)

Answer 10

• Studies chimapanzee behaviour over 50 year and observed groups who were at war with each other, slaughtering members of groups
• Goodall referred to this systematic slaughtering of a stronger group against a weaker one
• This does not appear to be an adaptive behaviour like the ethological approach suggests, the risk of injury is high when attacking, therefore not being adaptive to the animal

Question 11

Not all fixed action patterns are fixed (-)

Answer 11

• Evidence can suggest that learning and environmental factors can create variation within species, making it more appropriate to use modal action patterns rather than fixed action patterns
• Modal action patterns are instinctual behaviours, e.g dogs desire to chase a cat, but this differs from one individual species compared to another
• Some dogs chase cats, some don’t, and this is down to training, or specie differentiation of selective breeding of certain characteristics