Chapter 11: Aggression Flashcards
What is Aggression?
Behavior intended to harm another individuaal
What is Violence?
Extreme acts of aggression
What is Anger?
Strong feelings of displeasure in response to a perceived injury, the nature of which depends on the specific situation
What is Hostility?
Negative, antagonistic attitude toward another group
What is Instrumental Aggression?
Harm is inflicted as a means to a desired end, includes harming someone for personal gain, attention or even self defense
Emotional Aggression
Reactive Aggression; Harm is inflicted for its own sake
What is the connection between Culture and Aggression?
High rate of single parenthood in Americas, correlates with violent crime
Individualistic cultures are associated with violence
Guns in the US had higher gun-related violence
Violent Crime lower in the US than England and Wales
Murder rates in US higher than England
Different cultures have different attitudes and behaviors regarding aggression between men and women
Symptoms of Bullying
Extraordinary Suffering, feelings of panic, nervousness, and distraction in school, recurring memories of abuse. Can lead to depression and anxiety in adulthood, even suicide
What makes some societies peaceful?
Opposition of competition
Endorsement of cooperation in all aspects of life
What are the two types of Aggression?
Relational/Indirect Aggression
Overt Aggression
What is the link between Gender and Aggression?
Although boys tend to be more overtly aggressive than girls, boys do not tend to be more aggressive than girls when it comes to indirect or relational aggression
Relational Aggression
Type of Indirect Aggression that particularly targets a person’s relationships and social status
What is the link between individual Differences and Aggression?
People who tend to hold hostile cognitions, express anger, and exhibit irritability tend to behave more aggressively Emotional Susceptibility Narcissism Type A Personality Impulsivity
Emotional Susceptibility
Tendency to feel distressed, inadequate, and vulnerable to perceived threats
Narcissism
Tendency to have an inflated sense of self-worth and self-love but without a strong set of beliefs to support these feelings, thereby leaving the person’s self-esteem unstable and sensitive to criticism
Type A Personality
Tendency to be driven by feelings of inadequacy to try to prove oneself through personal accomplishments
Impulsivity
Being relatively unable to control one’s thoughts and behaviors
Provocation
Can light the relatively short fuses of these individuals, leadings to the potential explosion of aggression
Approaches to the issue of whether aggression is innate
Evolutionary Psychological Accounts
Biological Factors
Why Human Warfare originated
To obtain valuable resources and to attract mates and forge intragroup bonds
Behavior Genetics
Focuses on Genetic Transmission and behavior; genes play a role in physical aggression
Serotonin
Works like a braking mechanism to restrain impulsive acts of aggression
Serotonin and Aggression
Low levels of Serotonin are associated with higher levels of aggression
Prefrontal Cortex
Implicated with tendencies toward aggressive and violent behavior
Executive Functioning
Cognitive abilities and processes that allow humans to plan or inhibit their actions; enables people to respond to situations in a reasoned, flexible manner, as opposed to being driven purely by external stimuli
Rewards for Aggression
Negative Reinforcement
Positive Reinforcement
Negative Reinforcement
When aggression prevents or stops undesirable outcomes
Positive Reinforcement
When aggression produces desired outcomes
Social Learning Theory
Aggressive Behavior is strongly affected by learning; we learn from the examples of others as well as from direct experience with rewards and punishments
Who proposed the Social Learning Theory?
Albert Bandurra
When does punishment decrease aggressive behavior?
When it immediately follows the aggressive behavior
When it is strong enough to deter the aggressor
When it is consistently applied and perceived as fair and legitimate by the aggressor
Corporal Punishment
Use of Physical Force intended to cause the child pain, but not for injury, for the purpose of controlling or correcting the child’s behavior
Machismo
A way of thinking that challenges, abuse, and even differences of opinion must be met with fists or other weapons
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
Frustration, which is produced by interrupting a person’g progress toward an expected goal, will always elicit the motive to aggress;
All aggression is caused by frustration
Displacement
Inclination to aggress is deflected from the real target to a substitute
Catharsis
Displacing aggression in other ways; engaging in some relatively harmless pursuit could drain away energy from more violent tendencies
Earliest proponent of the Frustration-Aggression Theory
Neal Miller
Scapegoating
Blaming societal frustrations against minority groups or outgroups
Link between Heat and Aggression
People lose their cool in hot temperatures and behave more aggressively
Social Rejection and Aggression
People who are socially rejected by someone from a tight-knit group become likely to retaliate aggressively against all the members of the rejector’s group
Positive Affect and Aggression
Feeling good appears to be incompatible with anger and aggression
Excitation Transfer
Arousal created by one stimulus can intensify an individual’s emotional response to another stimulus
Who proposed Excitation Transfer?
Dolf Zillmann
What other factors are likely to increase aggression?
Noise, Violent Movies, and Arousing Music
Weapons Effect
The tendency that the likelihood of aggression will increase by the mere presence of weapons
Who proposed the Weapons Effect
Leonard Berkowitz
Aggression-Enhancing Situational Cue
Any object or external characteristic associated with successful aggression or the negative affect of pain or unpleasantness
Hostile Attribution Bias
They tend to perceive hostile intent in others
Effect of Alcohol on Aggression
Alcohol reduces anxiety which lowers people’s inhibitions against aggressing. Disrupts the way we process information
Alcohol Myopia
Alcohol narrows people’s focus of attention. Intoxicated people respond to initial, salient information about the situation but often miss later, more subtle indicators
What are aversive experiences that lead to aggression?
Frustration, Crowding, Heat, & Provocation
Which situational cues lead to aggression?
Guns and Violent Movies
What Individual & Cultural Differences lead to aggression?
Chronic Hostility and Cultures of Honor
What Higher Order Thinking can inhibit aggression?
Recognizing the danger of the situation or recognizing that what seemed like a provocation was really just an accident
How does Higher Order Thinking facilitate aggression?
When we perceive that aggression is encouraged by one’s peers in this situations or that a provocation was intentional
Agression & Media
Media Violence contributes to real aggression and violence; media violence can also produce long term effects by influencing people’s values and attitudes toward aggression, making it seem more legitimate and even necessary for social interaction and the resolution of social conflicts
How does Media Violence Cause these effects?
Playing violent video games has been found to cause increases in aggressive cognitions and affect, in addition to aggressive behavior.
Desensitization
A reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence; familiarity with violence reduces physiological arousal to new incidents of violence
Habituation
A novel stimulus gets our attention, and if it’s sufficiently interesting or exciting, it elicits physiological arousal
Cultivation
The capacity of the mass media to construct a social reality that people perceive as true, even if it isn’t
Pornography
Used to refer to explicit sexual material, regardless of its moral or aesthetic qualities
Types of Pornography
Nonviolent Pornography
Violent Pornography
Nonviolent Pornography & Aggression
The combination of positive affect and only moderate arousal is unlikely to trigger much aggression
Violent Pornography & Aggression
Violent Pornography brings together high arousal; negative emotional reactions (shock, alarm & disgust); and aggressive thoughts
What factors are associated with sexual aggression among college students?
Alcohol, Gender & Attitudes toward rape and toward women
Statistics Related to Partner Abuse
1/3 to 1/2 of female homicide victims are murdered by a husband or a boyfriend
What factors cause increased partner aggression?
Personal Characteristics, Socioeconomic Status, Interpersonal Conflict, Stress, Social Isolation, and the Experience of Growing up in a violent family
What factors are associated with increased child abuse?
Personal Characteristics of the abusing parent and of the child, the family’s socioeconomic status, stressful experiences, social isolation, marital conflict, and the abusing parent’s having been abused as a child
Cycle of Violence
Connection between violence in childhood and violence as an adult
Multisystematic Therapy
This approach addresses individuals’ problems at several different levels, including the needs of the adolescents and the many contexts in which they are embedded, such as family, peer group, school, and neighborhood
What steps can we take to reduce aggression more generally?
Reducing stressors such as frustration, discomfort, and provocation should reduce aggression; reduce weapons; get authorities involved; changing cost-reward payoffs associated with aggression
