Chapter 9 - Aggression

Question 1

define cyberbullying

Answer 1

intentional and repeated aggression via email, texts and social networking sites

Question 2

define aggression

Answer 2

physical or verbal behaviour intended to cause hard

physical: hurting someone’s body
social: such as bullying, cyberbullying, insults, harmful gossip or social exclusion
hostile: inflicting harm for its own sake; impulsive
instrumental: inflicting harm to gain something valuable

instrumental can turn into hostile

Question 3

explain the theory of agression as a biological phenomenon

Answer 3

• Aggression involves instinctive behaviour
• Mating-related aggression can often occur in men when competing with other men and can occur when it comes to their social status.
• The amygdala is the area in your brain associated with aggressive behaviour, especially when paired with a less active prefrontal cortex
• Alcohol can unleash aggression when people are provoked.
• aggression does correlate with testosterone.

Question 4

define instinctive behaviur

Answer 4

innate, unlearned, and universal

Question 5

define frustration-aggression theory

Answer 5

the theory that frustration triggers a readiness to aggress

frustration - anger - aggression

• can lead to aggression when a person has a controllable reason for why they are frustrating you

Question 6

define frustration

Answer 6

the blocking of a goal-directed behaviuor
- it grows when our motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expected gratification and when the blocking is complete

Question 7

define displacement

Answer 7

the redirection of aggression to a target other than then the source of the frustration. generally, the new target is a safer or more socially acceptable target

Question 8

define relative deprivation

Answer 8

the perception that one is less well off than others to whom one compares oneself

Question 9

define the social learning theory

Answer 9

that we learn social behaviour by observing and imitating and by being rewarded and punished

positive reinforcement: aggression produces desired outcome
negative reinforcement: aggression prevents undesirable outcomes (resulting in a policy change)

ex. kids and bobo doll experiment

Question 10

what are the 3 types fo aversive experiences?

Answer 10

pain: pain can heighten our levels of aggression
uncomfortable heat: heat can increase irritability leading to more aggressive behaviour
attack: “an eye for an eye”

Question 11

what are the elements of hostile agression

Answer 11

an aversive situation —> leads to hostile thoughts/memories, angry feeling, or arousal —-> aggressive reactions

Question 11

define social scripts

Answer 11

culturally provided mental instructions for how to act in various situation

Question 11

define catharsis

Answer 11

emotional release. the catharsis view of aggression is that aggressive drive is reduced when one releases aggressive energy, either by acting aggressively or by fantasizing about aggression
- shown that when angry people act out on their aggression were shown to be more aggressive if they hadn’t acted on their emotions
- watching or expressing hostility breeds more hostility

Question 12

what is the difference between indirect and direct aggression?

Answer 12

indirect: inflict harm without face-to-face conflict (gossip)
direct: behaviour aimed to hurt face-to-face (physical and verbal)

Question 13

what kinds of aggression does each sex normally do?

Answer 13

males: Direct
females: more indirect (relational aggression)

Question 14

how has the social learning theory influenced us with aggression?

Answer 14

• we have learned specific aggressive behaviuors
• develop more positive attitudes towards it
• create aggressive scripts (how we see the world)
• see world as aggressive place
• interpret unintentional behaviour as intentional (accident vs intentional)

Question 15

can aggressive objects acts as cues?

Answer 15

yes! an experiment was done seeing if having a gun or a badminton racket in the room would make people more prone to be aggressive with how they administered shocks to another person. gun made people almost three times more aggressive with how long they gave the shocks for.

Question 16

how does media affect how aggressive people are?

Answer 16

• media is saturated in violence, most kids see on average 8000 murders
• TV is just a reflection of our society, so it is showing that our world is a dangerous and its okay to be aggressive towards others like they are in the movies
• much more crime shown on TV compared to how much actually happens in real world, not properly reflecting society
• the more aggressive media one see, the more likely they are to become more aggressive
• doesn’t matter what kind of aggression you see (indirect or direct)
• weakes inhibitions, desensitized, tells us how to perform these acts, creates a wrong perception of the world

Question 17

what are the effect of violent video games?

Answer 17

short term: priming aggressive behaviours, desensitization to other suffering

long term: learn aggression-related scripts that become more accessible when real-life conflict arises.