Ch. 12 Aggression

Question 1

Aggression

Answer 1

AGGRESSION – Intentional behavior aimed at causing physical harm or psychological pain to another person.

• HOSTILE AGGRESSION – is an act of aggression stemming from feelings of anger and is aimed at inflicting pain or injury.
• INSTRUMENTAL AGGRESSION – Aggression that is done as a means to achieve some goal other than causing pain – an intermediary step toward a nonaggressive goal.
  
  • Ex: In rushing to get on a train, if you behaved aggressively purely out of the desire to make your train, then this is instrumental aggression. If, however, you felt angry that the people going up the stairs weren’t sharing the space fairly and felt a desire to dole out a few bruises, then the same act (i.e., pushing people out of your way while going downstairs to the train) would be hostile aggression.

Question 2

Evolutionary View on Aggression

Answer 2

EVOLUTIONARY VIEW – Evolutionary psychologists argue that physical aggression is genetically programmed into men because it enables them to defend their group and perpetuate their genes.

• Males aggress for two reasons:
  
  • To establish dominance over other males and secure the highest possible status
  • Males aggress out of sexual jealousy
• When females behave aggressively, in the evolutionary view, it is generally to protect their offspring.
• TESTOSTERONE – the hormone that fuels male aggression
  
  • Testosterone may lead to aggression by reducing our ability to control impulses.
  • However, the link between testosterone and aggression heavily depends on the social situation.
  • CHALLENGE HYPOTHESIS – testosterone and aggression are only related when opportunities for reproduction are high.
  • DUAL-HORMONE HYPOTHESIS – testosterone only relates to dominance behaviors when the stress hormone, CORTISOL, is low.
    
    • In stressful or dangerous times (i.e., when cortisol is elevated), testosterone is related to systematically less aggressive and dominance-seeking behaviors.
    • This means that testosterone only predicts aggression when there is a chance to gain something from that aggression, suggesting a specific relationship between testosterone and instrumental aggression.
    • This suggests that causality flows in both directions: That is, testosterone can increase aggression, but being in an aggressive, competitive, or sexual situation increases the production of testosterone.
  • Testosterone shares a chemical precursor with the other primary sex hormone, ESTRADIOL, that is higher in women than men. Estradiol relates to similar psychological variables as testosterone, such as aggression and sexuality.
    
    • In fact, the neurons that regulate the synthesis of estradiol also regulate aggression in both men and women.
  • Both the Challenge Hypothesis and the Dual-Hormone Hypothesis support the evolutionary explanation

AGGRESSION IN OTHER ANIMALS – Is aggression innate?

• Rats raised in isolation use the same pattern of threat and attack that experienced rats use when a fellow rat was introduced into the cage, suggesting that at least some types of aggression are innate.
• A cat raised with a rat was NOT aggressive to the rat, nor was it aggressive to other rats. However, this experiment failed to prove that aggressive behavior is not instinctive in cats; it merely demonstrates that early experience can override it.
• Based on the research on chimps, who are known for their aggressive behavior, we might conclude that humans, especially males, are genetically programmed for aggressive behavior.
  
  • However, bonobos are quite nonaggressive. Unfortunately, the bonobo way of life is rare in the animal kingdom. The near universality of aggression strongly suggests that aggressiveness has evolved and has been maintained because it has survival value.
• That said, Most social psychologists believe that aggression is an optional strategy depending on the situation.

Question 3

Culture and Aggression

Answer 3

CHANGES IN AGGRESSION ACROSS TIME AND CULTURES Within a given culture, changing social conditions frequently lead to significant changes in aggressive behavior.

• Ex: For the Iroquois, It would be hard to argue that they became ferocious warriors because of some innate aggressive impulse; rather, their aggressive shift almost certainly came about because a social change produced increases in competition.
• In close-knit cultures that depend on cooperation for the group’s survival, anger and aggression are considered dangerous and disruptive, and an offender will be ostracized or punished.
• When men live in cultures that lack internal and external threats to their survival, they are not raised to be aggressive, sex differences are minimized, and cooperation is encouraged.
  
  • Ex: TEDURAY, a hunter- gatherer culture in the Philippine who have established norms specifically designed to prevent aggression among themselves.
• Experiments have shown that cultural norms and expectations literally “get inside” people, causing them to behave differently under similar provocation.
  
  • Altogether, if human aggression was a reliable response to provocative stimuli, then humans in all cultures would be equally aggressive.

CULTURES OF HONOR – in which even small disputes put a man’s reputation for toughness on the line, requiring him to respond aggressively to restore his status

• These regions have rates of honor-related homicides five times higher than in other regions of the country.
• Homicide rates for White males from the South and Southwest are substantially higher than those for White northern males, especially in rural areas, presumably due to the history of cultures that were originally based on herding (had to protect the cattle, which was their livelihood), in contrast to cultures based on agriculture

Question 4

Gender and Aggression (Relational vs. Physical)

Answer 4

Gender and Aggression

PHYSICAL AGGRESSION – Most cases of extreme violence in the family are perpetrated by men.

• However, studies have found no significant gender differences in the percentage of men and women who are physically aggressive with their partners. The causes are the same for both parties.
• Similarly, in other studies, boys and girls were similarly nonaggressive.
• Among adults, sex difference in the willingness to inflict physical harm disappears when both sexes feel provoked and entitled to retaliate.
• In essence the tendency for all aggression (except the most extreme) are perpetrated equally by men and women.

RELATIONAL AGGRESSION – harming another person through the manipulation of relationships, usually in such covert acts as talking behind someone’s back, spreading false rumors about the target person, shunning or excluding that person – mostly by women.

• Gender differences appear as early as 3 years old.
• The greatest source of danger that teenagers face on the Internet does not come from pornography, predatory adults, or sexting, but rather bullying and harassment, most often by peers

Question 5

Learning Aggression

Answer 5

Learning to Behave Aggressively

• SOCIAL-COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY (Observational Learning) – The theory that people learn social behavior (e.g., aggression or altruism) in large part through observation and imitation of others and by cognitive processes such as plans, expectations, and beliefs.
  
  • BOBO DOLL (Albert Bandura) is the classic illustration.
    
    • Children who did not see the aggressive adult in action almost never unleashed any aggression against the hapless doll.
    • The experimenter modeled violent treatment of the doll – and the children imitated her perfectly, even creating new ways of abusing the doll.
• Presenting nonaggressive models – Children first watched youngsters behaving peacefully even when provoked (nonagressive model). Later, when the children were put in a situation in which they themselves were provoked, they were much less likely to respond aggressively than were children who had not seen the nonaggressive models.

Question 6

Physiological Influences to Aggression

Answer 6

Physiological Influences to Aggression – when people are drunk, hot, or in considerable pain, they are more likely to lash out at others.

• THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL – Just like testosterone, alcohol lower inhibitions, increasing the potential for aggressive behavior.
  
  • Also disrupts the way we usually process information. This leads to aggression because intoxicated people often respond to the most obvious aspects of a social situation and tend to miss the subtleties. If you are sober and someone steps on your toe, you would notice that the person didn’t do it on purpose. But if you were drunk, you might miss the subtlety of the situation and respond as if that person had purposely stomped on your foot. If you and the offender are males, you might slug him. This response is typical of the kinds of ambiguous situations that men tend to interpret as provocative, especially under the influence of alcohol.
  • “THINK-DRINK” EFFECT: When people expect alcohol to have certain effects on them, it often does.
    
    • Experiment: The more alcohol the men believed they were drinking, the more aggressively they behaved toward the confederate, even when the drink was actually nonalcoholic.

THE EFFECTS OF PAIN AND HEAT – If an animal is in pain and cannot flee the scene, it will almost invariably attack.

• Most of us feel a flash of irritation when we hit our thumb with a hammer and know the feeling of wanting to lash out at the nearest available target. In fact, all forms of bodily discomfort lower the threshold for aggressive behavior.
• The hotter it is on a given day or a given average year, the greater the likelihood that violent crimes will occur

Question 7

Social Situation and Aggression

Answer 7

Social Situations and Aggression

FRUSTRATION-AGGRESSION HYPOTHESIS – people’s perception that they are being prevented from attaining a goal will increase the probability of an aggressive response.

• The closer the goal >> the greater the expectation of pleasure that is thwarted >> the more likely the aggression.
• Frustration does not always produce aggression. Rather, it seems to produce anger or annoyance and a readiness to aggress if other things about the situation are conducive to aggressive behavior, including:
  
  • The size and strength of the person responsible for your frustration
  • as well as that person’s ability to retaliate.
• However, if the frustration is understandable, legitimate, and unintentional, the tendency to aggress will be reduced.
• Frustration is not the same as DEPRIVATION: Children who don’t have toys do not aggress more than children who do. But children who have the EXPECTATION of having a toy and are thwarted from that goal become FRUSTRATED, which can then lead to aggression. Frustration is about goal attainment, whereas deprivation is about resources.
  
  • Social scientists have found that it is often not ABSOLUTE DEPRIVATION** that creates anger and aggression but **RELATIVE DEPRIVATION, which occurs when people see a discrepancy between what they have and what they expect to have (i.e. are thwarted from their expected goal).
    
    • Thus, an important cause of aggression is relative deprivation: the perception that you (or your group) have less than you deserve, less than what you have been led to expect, or less than what people similar to you have.

Provocation and Reciprocation – Aggression frequently stems from the need to reciprocate after being provoked by aggressive behavior from another person.

• Provocation and aggression are so strongly linked that they appear to overpower gender differences in aggression. While men are more aggressive than women under neutral conditions, provocation leads to aggression for both sexes.
  
  • Similar to testosterone and alcohol, provocation leads to aggression through impeded self-control.

Weapons as Aggressive Cues

• WEAPONS EFFECT – an increase in aggression that can occur because of the mere presence of a gun or other weapon.
  
  • Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony Le Page – Classic Weapons experiment – Those individuals who had been angered in the presence of the gun administered stronger electric shocks than those angered in the presence of the racket. The presence of a gun seems to trigger an aggressive response when a person is already primed to respond that way because of frustration or anger.
  • The effect is physiological as well. Those who interact with a gun for 15 minutes show higher testosterone levels. “The finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger may also be pulling the finger.”

Question 8

Sexual Assault

Answer 8

The Case of Sexual Assault

Definition of RAPE – to include the penetration of any bodily orifice with any part of the body or with any object, without the consent of the victim.

• MOTIVATIONS FOR RAPE – Some men commit rape out of a desire to dominate, humiliate, or punish their victims.
  
  • They want to conquer and degrade the victim.
  • They are unable to empathize with women.
    
    • These reasons may explain why sexual violence is often committed by high-status men, including high school and college athletic stars, powerful politicians, and celebrities, who could easily find consenting sexual partners.
    • 85% of all rapes or attempted rapes occur between people who know each other.

SEXUAL SCRIPTS AND THE PROBLEM OF CONSENT

• SEXUAL SCRIPTS – schemas for how sexual encounters play out between potential partners that males and females learn as part of their gender roles in American society.
  
  • They are implicit rules that specify proper sexual behavior for a person in a given situation, varying with the person’s gender, age, religion, social status, and peer group.
  • Sexual scripts for gay men and lesbians tend to be more flexible than heterosexual scripts because partners are not following traditional gender roles.
• PROBLEM OF CONSENT – The repeated message of antirape groups “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” seems obvious. But American sexual scripts hold mixed messages regarding the meaning of this word; even if a woman wants sex, she is not supposed to seem too eager, which makes a “no” seem less absolute.
  
  • In one survey of high school students, although almost 100% of the males and females agreed that the man should stop his sexual advances as soon as the woman says no, nearly half of those same students also believed that when a woman says no, she doesn’t always mean it.
  • Given that nonverbal behaviors are ambiguous by nature, the most common cues people use are also the most likely to be misunderstood.

Question 9

Effects of Media Violence

Answer 9

Studying the Effects of Media Violence – Most of the experimental evidence demonstrates that watching MOVIE violence does increase the frequency of aggressive behavior.

• However, the research is not consistent, however, and some reviews of the experimental literature have found minimal or no effects.
• VIDEO GAMES – Actively playing violent video games seems to have a stronger influence: Games that directly reward violence – for example, by awarding points or moving the player to the next level after a “kill” – are especially likely to increase feelings of hostility, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive acts.
  
  • This is true cross-culturally.
  • Both violent video games and prosocial video games have DIRECT EFFECTS on their players.
• HABITUATION – when a person develops LESS AROUSAL from continued exposure to a stimulus.
  
  • Research shows that we habituate to violence, becoming unmoved by it over time.
• SENSITIZATION – when a person develops MORE AROUSAL from continued exposure to a stimulus.
• The numbing effect of HABITUATION may protect us from feeling upset, but it also increases our indifference to real victims of violence and others who need help.
  
  • Once players get in the habit of DEHUMANIZING the “enemy,” that habit can be carried over into how players come to regard real people, not just robots and life-like cartoons.

Exposure to media violence may have these effects for three reasons:

1. increase physiological arousal and excitement
2. trigger an automatic tendency to imitate the hostile or violent characters
3. activate existing aggressive ideas and expectations.

• Movies and games also model SOCIAL SCRIPTS, approved ways of behaving when we are frustrated, angry, or hurt. Violent media shows the public how to commit violence while simultaneously making it cool.
• The more violence children watch, the more aggressively they behave later as teenagers and young adults.
• Similarly, children’s consumption of media violence early in the school year predicted higher rates of all three kinds of aggression and less prosocial behavior later in the year.
• Those who watch more TV have an exaggerated view of the degree of violence taking place outside their own homes and they have a much greater fear of being personally assaulted.
• The usual assumption has been that watching violence makes people more aggressive, but aggressive people are also drawn to watching violence.
  
  • Or Third factor may be causing both – born with a predisposition toward violence or learn it as toddlers from abusive parents.
    
    • Exposure to media violence has the strongest relationship in children who are already predisposed to violence. Duh!
• Research suggests that for men, a positive correlation between watching violent pornography and hostile, aggressive attitudes toward women, that association is largely due to men who already have high levels of hostility toward women** and are **predisposed to sexual aggression.

5 REACTIONS explaining why exposure to violence might increase aggression in those vulnerable “media consumers”:

1. Norms: “If they can do it, so can I.” weaken their previously learned inhibitions against violent behavior.
2. Observational Learning: “Oh, so that’s how you do it!” providing them with ideas as to how they might go about it.
3. Misattribution: “Those feelings I am having must be real anger rather than merely my reaction to a stressful day.” make an aggressive response more likely through priming.
4. Habituation: “Ho-hum, another brutal beating. What’s on the other channel?” reduce both our sense of horror about violence and our sympathy for the victims.
5. Self-fulfilling Prophecy: “I had better get him before he gets me!” makes people think the world is a dangerous place,

• Media Effects pale in comparison to the biological, social, economic, and psychological factors that are far more powerful predictors of aggressive behavior:
  
  • a child’s genetic predispositions to violence
  • low self-control
  • being socially rejected by peers
  • criminal opportunity
  • being the victim of childhood physical abuse
  • being in a peer group that endorses violence
  • living in a community where aggression is a way of life

Question 10

Decreasing Aggression

Answer 10

How to Decrease Aggression

• PUNISHING AGGRESSION WITH AGGRESSION? – if the punishment takes the form of an aggressive act, parents are actually modeling aggressive behavior, thereby inducing their child to imitate them.
• The threat of relatively severe punishment for committing a transgression does not make the transgression less appealing to the child. But the threat of mild punishment, of a degree just powerful enough to get the child to stop the undesired activity temporarily, leads the child to try to justify his or her restraint and, as a result, can make the behavior less appealing.
  
  • However, the use of harsh punishments to reduce aggression usually backfires; it may put a halt to a child’s aggressive behavior in the short term, but children who are physically punished tend to become more aggressive and antisocial over time.

Question 11

Punishment and Adults

Answer 11

USING PUNISHMENT ON VIOLENT ADULTS

• Punishment can indeed act as a deterrent but only if two conditions are met. Punishment must be:
  
  • – It must follow quickly after the aggression occurred
  • – and it must be unavoidable.
    
    • In the real world, these conditions are almost never met.
• The death penalty seems generally unrelated to homicide rates
• Perpetrators don’t even know what the consequences of their actions would be. Usually, they don’t even find out until after the crime is committed. Add to that plee deals.
• IMO the only way Capital Punishment can be successful, is through advertising and certainty of punishment, two things that are impossible.

Question 12

Managing Anger

Answer 12

Can We Release Anger by Indulging It?

• CATHARSIS – The notion that “blowing off steam” – by behaving aggressively or watching others do so – relieves built-up anger and aggressive energy and hence reduces the likelihood of further aggressive behavior.
  
  • Sigmund Freud’s - catharsis – Freud held a “hydraulic” idea of aggressive impulses: Unless people were allowed to express (“sublimate”) their aggression in harmless or constructive ways, he believed, their aggressive energy would be dammed up, pressure would build, and the energy would seek an outlet, either exploding into acts of extreme violence or manifesting itself as symptoms of mental illness.
• EFFECTS OF AGGRESSIVE ACTS ON SUBSEQUENT AGGRESSION
• Competitive games often make participants and observers more aggressive.
• Many people feel worse, both physically and mentally, after an angry confrontation. When people ruminate about their anger, talk to others incessantly about how angry they are, or vent their feelings in hostile acts, their blood pressure shoots up, they often feel angrier, and they behave even more aggressively later than if they had just let their feelings of anger subside.
• BLAMING THE VICTIM OF OUR AGGRESSION – In an experiment, participants inflicted either psychological or physical harm on an innocent person who had not hurt them.
  
  • Participants then persuaded themselves that their victims were not nice people and therefore deserved what they got.
  • This certainly reduces dissonance, but it also sets the stage for further aggression because once a person has succeeded in finding reasons to dislike someone, it is easier to harm that victim again.
  • Acting aggressively toward someone who harmed you increases your hostility towards that person, thus feeding the anger; that originally made you aggress.

What Are We Supposed to Do with Our Anger?

• If aggression leads to self-justification, which in turn breeds more aggression, what should we do with our angry feelings toward someone?
• ACTIVELY ENABLING – control anger by actively enabling it to dissipate.
  
  • Count to 100
  • Actively enabling
  • Taking deep breaths
  • Get involved in a pleasant, distracting activity
  • Mindfully Meditate
• VENTING VERSUS SELF-AWARENESS
• REDUCE ANGER ABOUT THE PAST** – When you want to feel less angry about a bygone offense, one trick is to **recall it from a third-person perspective.
  
  • Students who recalled an angry experience from a first-person perspective reported feeling intense emotions and had an increase in blood pressure, whereas students who recalled an angry experience from a distanced, third-person perspective had less intense emotions and no increase in blood pressure.
• Write down your feelings in a journal.
  
  • People under stress were instructed simply to write their “deepest thoughts and feelings” about the stressful event or secret.
    
    • As a result, they felt healthier than did people who suffered in silence, who wrote about trivial topics, or who wrote about the details of the traumatic events without revealing their own underlying feelings. The benefits of “opening up” are due not to the venting of feeling but primarily to the insights and self-awareness that usually accompany such self- disclosure.
• TRAINING IN COMMUNICATION AND PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS
  
  • Feeling angry is part of being human, but we have to learn the right skills to express anger or annoyance constructively and nonviolently. In most societies, it is precisely the people who lack those social skills who are most prone to violent solutions to problems in relationships.
    
    • Teach people such techniques as how to communicate anger or criticism in constructive ways.
• GETTING APOLOGIES RIGHT – How should you apologize in a way that won’t make the other person even angrier?
  
  • Typically, any apology sincerely given and in which the perpetrator takes full responsibility is effective.
  • To maximize the likelihood that someone will accept your apology, you must:
    
    • genuinely say you are sorry
    • reassure the person that you will not do the same thing again.
    • Do NOT try to explain your behavior at the moment of the apology.
• Men simply have a higher threshold for what constitutes an offensive action warranting an apology.
• A woman might feel angry or slighted that her partner doesn’t even notice an offense that she thinks is serious enough to warrant an apology, and the man might feel angry that she is being oversensitive and thin-skinned.
• COUNTERING DEHUMANIZATION BY BUILDING EMPATHY
  
  • By building empathy among people, aggressive acts should be more difficult to commit.
  • Those trained to empathize – that is, to take the perspective of the other person – behaved far less aggressively toward that person than did students who had not received the training.
  • Participants gave weaker shocks to the victim who had revealed personal information.
    
    • It’s harder to harm a stranger if you have made a personal connection with that person, and this is true whether the stranger is your neighbor, a homeless person, a sales clerk, or a civilian enemy.
    • Children who are taught to put themselves in others’ shoes often have higher self-esteem, are more generous, and are less aggressive than children who lack skills of empathy.
    • Children not only had learned to be more empathic but also had higher self-esteem, were more generous, and were less aggressive than were students who had not participated in the program.
    • People who develop greater empathic ability also tend to have higher academic achievement.

Disrupting the Rejection-Rage Cycle

SOCIAL REJECTION is the most significant risk factor for teenage suicide, despair, and violence. When a team of researchers investigated 15 school shootings that occurred between 1995 and 2001, they found that in 13 of them, the killers had been angered by bullying and social rejection.

• schools with ANTICONFLICT INTERVENTION groups showed a 30% reduction in disciplinary reports for peer conflict.