Chapter 6: Human Aggression

Question 1

Define:

aggressive actions

Aggression Defined

Answer 1

Intentional behavior aimed at causing either physical or psychological pain.

• It is not to be confused with assertiveness.

Question 2

What are Eros and Thanatos?

Answer 2

• Eros is an instinct toward life, while Thanatos is an instinct toward death—which leads to aggressive actions.
• These two drives were theorized by Freud, and he also said that organisms will work to reduce or let out Thanatos or else become ill.

Question 3

What is:

hydraulic theory

Is Aggression Instinctive?

Answer 3

The analogy is one of water pressure building up in a container: Unless aggression is allowed to drain off, it will produce some sort of explosion.

• According to Freud, society performs an essential function in regulating Thanatos and in helping people to sublimate it—that is, to turn the destructive energy into acceptable or useful behavior.

Question 4

What did biologist Zing Yang Kuo demonstrate about inherent aggression with his cat and mouse experiment?

Is Aggression Instinctive?

Answer 4

• Kuo raised a cat and a mouse in the same cage from a young age, and the cat never attacked the mouse and also refused to attack or chase other mice if given the opportunity.
• However, it fails to prove that aggression isn’t instinctive, merely that behaviours can be changed at a young age.
• Future experiments would show that rats rasied in complete isolation will attack a fellow rat if introduced into the cage, and will use the same pattern of threat and attack that experienced fighting rats use.

Question 5

How do the chimpanzee and bonobo factor into evolutionary theories about instinctive aggression?

Is Aggression Instinctive?

Answer 5

• We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, an extremely aggressive species. From this we may conclude that humans are genetically programmed for aggression as well.
• Bonobos, cousins of chimps, are one of the least violent mammals. They diffuse aggression and tension using sex.
• However, bonobos are a rare exception. Aggression is nearly universal among mammals, suggesting it evolved for its survival value.

Question 6

Is aggression always our first response to tension?

Is Aggression Instinctive?

Answer 6

• Nearly all organisms have evolved strong inhibitory mechanisms that allow them to surpress aggression when it’s in their best interest.
• Aggression is an optional strategy determined by previous experiences and social context.
  
  • As Kuo’s cat and mouse experiment, and the bonobos demonstrate, aggression can be virtually eliminated within a culture.

Question 7

What examples can we use to demonstrate the great importance social situations have in determining human aggression?

Is Aggression Instinctive?

Answer 7

• Leonard Berkowitz has suggested that humans have an inborn tendency to respond to certain provocative stimuli by striking out against the perpetrator.
• Whether the aggressive tendency is actually expressed in overt action is a function of a complex interplay between these innate propensities, a variety of learned inhibitory responses, and the precise nature of the social situation.
• There are many so-called primitive tribes (e.g. Pygmies of Central Africa) that manage to live in cooperative friendliness, both within their own tribe and in their relations with others. Among these people, acts of aggression are extremely rare.
• Meanwhile, in a more “civilized” society like our own, our elected leaders choose to spend a huge percentage of our resources on military hardware and personnel, family violence is commonplace, drive-by shootings have become a tragic aspect of urban life, rampage killings take place in our high schools, and in several parts of the world suicide bombers have emerged as a fact of life.

Question 8

What is the “survival of the fittest” argument for why we shouldn’t try to reduce aggression in humans?

Is Aggression Useful?

Answer 8

Biologists and anthropologists have noted that we should keep aggression because it ensures the survival of our species. This has been demonstrated in studies of Old World monkeys, which show that aggression patterns play a key role in establishing the alpha of a colony and ensuring its order and survival. The latter is achieved because the alpha is the one who reproduces the most, meaning the aggressive genes are further bred.

Question 9

Is aggression really the key to success?

Is Aggression Useful?

Answer 9

• To equate high achievement and advancement with hostility and aggression is to confuse the issue. A problem or skill can be mastered without harming other people or even without attempting to conquer them.
• This is a difficult distinction for us to grasp because the Western mind—and perhaps the American mind in particular—has been trained to equate success with victory, to equate doing well with beating someone.
• Ashley Montagu has argued that we’ve oversimplified Darwin’s theory a lot, mainly because during the Industrial Revolution it was a convenient justification.
• Peter Kropotkin has pointed out that altruism is also demonstrated in chimps, but his ideas were ignored because they didn’t fit the tone of the IR.

Question 10

What did Bushman’s experiment with punching bags demonstrate about the idea of catharsis?

Is Aggression Useful?

Answer 10

In this experiment, participants were made angry by having a confederate insult them. Immediately afterwards, participants either: (1) spent a few minutes slugging a punching bag while thinking about the student who made them angry, (2) hit the punching bag and were told to think of it as physical exercise, or (3) just sat there. At the end of the experiment, the students who just sat there felt the least angry. Additionally, after all this the participants were given the opportunity to blast the insulter with a loud noise. The students in the first condition were the most aggressive, blasting the noise the loudest and longest.

Question 11

What does Russell Geen’s experiment demonstrate about the catharsis hypothesis when individuals are allowed to directly target their provoker?

Is Aggression Useful?

Answer 11

In this experiments, participants were paired with confederates. (1) The confederate angered the participant. This phase involved exchanging opinions on various issues. The participant received a shock when his partner disagreed with an opinion. (2) The participant was a teacher and the confederate a learner. Some participants shocked the confederate for his mistakes while others simply recorded the errors. (3) All the participants could give shocks to the confederates. The people who had previously shocked the confederate delivered more frequent and more intense shocks the second round. This study shows that the catharsis hypothesis does not work; venting anger merely increases hostility.

Question 12

Why does expression aggression lead to greater hostility?

Is Aggression Useful?

Answer 12

• When we experience negative feelings towards another person, it becomes easier to follow such behaviour with consistent statements and actions, particularly if we’ve retaliated in public.
• Retaliation is also often done in overkill, which leads to dissonance reduction. The greater the discrepancy between what the perpetrator did to you and your retaliation, the greater the dissonance; the greater the dissonance, the greater your need to derogate him.
• Committing acts of violence increases our negative feelings about the victims because we have to justify our actions. This is why violence breeds more violence.
• We also tend to feel like we were aggressed against much more forcibly than we actually were, leading us to over-retaliate. In experiments, participants had their fingers squeezed and then were asked to squeeze the other person’s finger with what they felt was the same pressure. All the participants squeezed much harder.

Question 13

What role does the amygdala play in aggression?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 13

When this area is electrically stimulated, docile organisms become violent; similarly, when neural activity in this area is blocked, violent organisms become docile. But the impact of neural mechanisms can be modified by social factors.

Question 14

What role does testosterone play in aggression?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 14

• Injections of this hormone has been shown to increase aggression in animals.
• Naturally occurring testosterone levels are significantly higher among prisoners convicted of violent crimes than among those convicted of nonviolent crimes.
  
  • Prisoners with higher testosterone levels violated more prison rules.
• Fraternity members who were generally considered more rambunctious, less socially responsible, and more crude had the highest average testosterone levels.

Question 15

When it comes to testosterone, are men more aggressive than women?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 15

• When it comes to physical aggression, the answer appears to be yes.
• In experiments comparing children all cross the world, among boys, there was far more nonplayful pushing, shoving, and hitting than among girls.
• Worldwide, the overwhelming majority of persons arrested for violent crimes are men.

Question 16

What is:

relational aggression

Causes of Aggression

Answer 16

Coined by Nikki Crick, this term refers to activity aimed at hurting others by sabotaging their reputations and relationships with peers. Examples include exclusion, spreading false rumors, and malicious gossip.

Question 17

Is the gender difference in physical aggression biological or social in origin?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 17

• We’re currently not sure, but the evidence points to it being biological. The immense social changes over the past 50 years has shown an increase in violent crimes among males, but not females.
• A cross-cultural study by Archer and McDaniel asked teenagers in 11 countries to read a story that was interrupted, and the teens had to finish it. In all the countries, young men showed a greater tendency toward violent solutions to conflict than young women did.
• However, biology is not the be-all-end-all. Archer and McDaniel also found that women from Australia and New Zealand were more likley to be aggressive than women from Sweden and South Korea.

Question 18

What is the effect of alcohol on aggression?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 18

• Although people tend to behave more aggressively when they’ve injested alcohol, simply doing so doesn’t automatically cause aggression.
• Rather, alcohol serves as a disinhibotor, meaning that we feel less cautious than usual when we drink alcohol. More importantly, alcohol also disrupts the way we usually process information.
• Drunk people miss out on the subtleties of social situations. For example, sober you might not mind if someone accidentally steps on your toe. Drunk you might interpret the situation as the other person intentionally stomping on you, and react accordingly.

Question 19

What is the effect of pain and discomfort on aggression, and what are the studies that have looked at this?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 19

• If an organisms experiences pain and cannot flee the scene, it will attack almost anything in sight.
• Leonard Berkowitz showed that students who had their hand immersed in very cold water were much more likely to commit aggressive acts against other students.
• Carlsmith and Anderson found that riots were far more likley to occur during hot days than cold ones. In a recent study, Anderson has also shown that violent crimes are more likely to be committed on hot days—but heat didn’t have an effect on nonviolent crimes like property crimes.
• Griffitt and Veitch administered tests to students in normal temperature rooms and hot rooms. The students in the hot rooms reported feeling more aggressive and also expressed more hostility towards a stranger they were asked to describe and rate.

Question 20

What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis and how is it demonstrated by Barker, Dembo, and Lewin?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 20

• Simply, researchers predict that if an individual is thwarted on the way to a goal, the resulting frustration will increase the probability of an aggressive response.
• In this experiment, one set of children were shown some toys and were told to stand outside during a painfully long waiting period before they were allowed to play with the toys. The other set of children were just allowed to play with the toys without being frustrated. The frustrated group was extremely destructive when finally given the toys. They tended to smash the toys, throw them against the wall, step on them, etc.

Question 21

How does the timing of frustration influence the resulting aggressive response?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 21

• For example, you would be much more frustrated if you were just about to take a bite into your food and someone took it away from you than if someone stopped you on your way to buy food.
• Mary Harris conducted an experiment in which she had confederates cut into various lines at various points. As expected, the further up the line people cut in, the more aggressive people got. Frustration is increased when a goal is near and your progress toward it is interrupted.
• Kulik and Brown pointed out that frustration is also increased when the interruption is unexpected or seems illegitimate. In this experiment, participants were calling people to collect donations. Some participants were told that they’d previously experienced a lot of success, while others were told not to be too hopeful. The participants were in fact calling conferedates, all of whom declined to donate. The callers with high expectations demonstrated more aggression, smalling down the phone with more force and speaking harshly. As well, the subjects who heard unjustified excuses (e.g. charities are a rip-off) were more aggressive.

Question 22

What did the experiment of Mallick and McCandless demonstrate in regards to social learning and aggression?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 22

In this experiment, 3rd graders were frustrated by having another child’s clumsiness prevent them from achieving a goal that would have resulted in a cash prize. Children who were told that the other child was feeling “sleepy and upset” demonstrated much less aggression than children who weren’t given this explanation.

Question 23

How do aggressive stimuli affect aggressive behaviour?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 23

This is a type of priming, where certain cues associated with aggression increase a person’s tendency to aggress.

• It counteracts the saying “guns don’t kill people, people do.” An angry person can pull the trigger of his gun if he wants to commit violence; but the trigger can also pull the finger or otherwise elicit aggressive reactions from him, if he is ready to aggress and does not have strong inhibitions against such behavior.

Question 24

How does deindividuation factor into aggressive behaviour?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 24

This term refers to a state of lessened self-awareness, reduced concern over social evaluation, and weakened restraints. When individuals feel anonymous, they are more likely to engage in prohibited forms of behaviour, such as aggression. This is because individuals are able to feel less responsible for their actions.

Question 25

What did Donnerstein demonstrate in regards to the effect of violent pornography on aggressive behaviour?

Causes of Aggression

Answer 25

In this experiment, men were shown one of three films: an aggressive-erotic one involving rape, a purely erotic one without aggression, or a neutral film that was neither aggressive nor erotic. After viewing one of these films, the men took part in a supposedly unrelated study that involved teaching either a male or a female confederate some nonsense syllables. The men were instructed to administer electric shocks to the confederate when he or she gave incorrect answers; they were also allowed to choose whatever level of shock they wished to use. (No shocks were actually delivered.) Those men who had earlier seen the rape film subsequently administered the most intense shocks—but only to the female confederate.

Question 26

Does violence sell? Use the example done by Bushman and Bonacci.

Causes of Aggression

Answer 26

In this experiment, participants watched TV shows that were violent, sexually explicit, or neutral. Each of the shows contained the same nine ads. Immediately after seeing the show, the viewers were asked to recall the brands and to pick them out from photos of supermarket shelves. Twenty-four hours later, they were phoned and asked to recall the brands they had seen during the viewing. The people who saw the ads during the viewing of a neutral (nonviolent, non-sexually explicit) show were able to recall the advertised brands better than the people who saw the violent show or sexually explicit show. This was true both immediately after viewing and 24 hours after viewing and was true for both men and women of all ages.

Question 27

Why is pure reason ineffective at reducing violence?

Toward the Reduction of Violence

Answer 27

• Even if convinced that aggression, in general, is undesirable, individuals will behave aggressively unless they firmly believe aggression is undesirable for them.
• The problem of the control of aggression is one that first occurs in early childhood—that is, at a time when the individual is too young to be reasoned with—logical arguments are of little value.

Question 28

Is punishment an effective deterrent to aggression?

Toward the Reduction of Violence

Answer 28

• Severe punishment has been shown to be effective temporarily, but unless used with extreme caution, it can have the opposite effect in the long run.
• Observations of parents and children in the real world have demonstrated time and again that parents who use severe punishment tend to produce children who are extremely aggressive or who, as adults, favor violent means of obtaining personal and political ends.
• Children who are physically punished by an impersonal, cold adult are far less likely to comply with the adult’s wishes once the adult has left the room. Thus, there is some reason to believe that punishment can be useful if it is applied judiciously in the context of a warm relationship.
• Mild punishment is much more effective than harsh punishment. If individuals can’t externally attribute their behaviours, they’ll have to decide that maybe they don’t really like the bad behaviour anymore.

Question 29

How effective is the punishment of aggressive models?

Toward the Reduction of Violence

Answer 29

• The theory is that individuals who are vicariously punished for their aggression will become less aggressive. Data from around the world has not been able to support this theory.
• Studies have shown that children who watche films in which the aggressive person was punished display significantly less aggressive behavior than the children who watch films of the person being rewarded.
• However, seeing a model being punished for aggression did not decrease the general level of aggression below that of a group of children who were never exposed to an aggressive model.

Question 30

Is ignoring the aggressive behaviours and rewarding the nonaggressive behaviours of children effective?

Toward the Reduction of Violence

Answer 30

• This strategy is based on the assumption that people frequently behave aggressively as a way of attracting attention. Thus, paradoxically, punishing negative behaviours can be interpreted as reward.
• A study by Brown and Elliot showed that aggression rates in a nursery decreased when the caregivers only paid attention to nonaggressive behaviour.
• Joel Davitz demonstrated that frustration can lead to constructive behaviour if constructive behaviours have been made attractive by prior training.

Question 31

How effective is the presence of nonaggressive models?

Toward the Reduction of Violence

Answer 31

Aggression can be an act of conformity. If it’s indicated that aggressive behaviour is appropriate, then the chances that you’ll engage in this behaviour will increase.

Question 32

How does building empathy toward others affect aggressive tendencies?

Toward the Reduction of Violence

Answer 32

• Most people find it difficult to inflict pain purposely on another human being unless they can find some way of dehumanizing their victim.
• Dehumanization makes it possible for us to aggress against another person, but it also guarantees that we will continue to aggress against that person.
• Norma and Seymour Feshbach have conducted studies which show that the more empathy a person has, the less he or she resorts to aggressive actions.