Exam 4 Chapter 12 Flashcards
What’s the difference between aggression and violence?
Aggression: any behavior intended to harm a person who doesn’t wish to be harmed (intention to harm someone)
Violence: extreme form of aggression that has severe physical harm as its goal (harm done to person)
What’s the difference between instrumental and hostile aggression?
Instrumental: a means to an end; helps achieve a goal (ex: football)
Hostile: an end in itself; results from anger (ex: Will Smith hitting Chris Rock)
What’s important to remember about the causes of extreme aggression, like mass shootings?
It requires multiple causal factors to be present
What is Freud’s instinct explanation for aggression, and how is it related to catharsis?
Freud says people are innately aggressive; it’s who we are. He believes in catharsis; you must release your aggression before you ‘explode’
How could aggression have been evolutionarily adaptive for men?
It established dominance, which women chose for the protection of their offspring. So, aggressive men had more children and passed on the trait
How can evolution create both a
drive to be prosocial and a drive to be aggressive?
These behaviors are tools we can use when the situation demands it.
Constant, indiscriminate helping and aggression would not be adaptive
How does culture influence aggressive behavior?
Behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions are transmitted from one generation to the next
What is the Southern Culture of Honor and why does it exist?
Culture consists of knowledge and beliefs that a group found to be helpful in the past, which were then passed through generations (ex: U.S. southerners are more aggressive bc they used to be herders and had to protect their animals from being stolen)
Cohen (1996): What were the methods? What were the major findings?
Studied male Northern and Southern students to see how they would react to someone insulting them. Southerners were more aggressive and had higher testosterone levels
How is aggression related to gender?
Men and women have different role models for aggressive behavior. As a result, our culture encourages different kinds of aggression for men and women.
What differences in aggression do we find between men and women?
Men are more likely to be violent and inflict serious injury, whereas women are more likely to engage in relational aggression (manipulating relationships), gossiping, shunning, or spreading rumors
How do strong or unpleasant sensory experiences (like pain or heat) influence aggression?
Physiological discomfort contributes to aggression.
How and why does alcohol influence aggression?
Intoxication makes people more likely to act aggressively. Aggression inhibits cognition, make you lose self-awareness, inhibitions, and people expect to be aggressive when drinking, so they are
What is social learning theory? How did it differ compared to the classic behavioral approach to learning?
It suggests that behavior is learned by observing and imitating the behavior of others.
It differs bc the classic behavioral approach to learning says people learn by directly experiencing rewards or punishment
Bandura (1961): What were the methods and results of the study?
Children observed an adult playing with an inflatable doll (Bobo) aggressively or not, then were observed to see if they would behave the same way. If the adult was aggressive, the child was also aggressive
Why is media violence a significant problem?
Watching violent media makes a person more likely to act aggressively or violently
Johnson et al (2002): What were the methods and results of the study?
They tracked 700 families for over 17 years to see how violent media affect people.
Time spent watching TV during adolescence and early adulthood predicted violent acts later in life.
How does exposure to media violence increase aggression?
Priming occurs: seeing something makes you more likely to think about it in the future, making you more likely to do that as well
What are scripts, and why do aggressive scripts lead to more aggressive acts?
They are expectations for how events typically occur; they develop through observation and help you predict how people act.
If you have aggressive scripts, you’re more likely to predict that a confrontation will lead to aggression or violence.
What is desensitization, and why are desensitized people more likely to aggress?
Frequent exposure to something makes it seem less severe. This makes it a more comfortable behavioral choice.
Anderson and Dill (2000): What was the methodology? What were the major findings? How did they measure aggressive behavior?
Participants played a violent or non-violent game and then play a ‘competitive’ game with a partner where you could blare loud noise in their ear if you won. Participants that played violent games were likely to be more aggressive
What is unique about violent video games that makes them likely to increase aggression compared to violent movies or TV?
They’re more interactive
What do we know about the cause-and-effect relationship between violent media and violent people?
Violent media has an impact on people but has the greatest impact on those who are already prone to violent behavior
What is Dollard’s (1939) Frustration-Aggression hypothesis? What is displacement? What factors influence how frustrated you become?
The theory that frustration increases the probability of an aggressive response.
Often can’t aggress against thwarter, so we find an easier target to take out anger on
When are you more likely to aggress when frustrated?
If you can safely retaliate against the person causing your frustration, that person can’t retaliate, and the person is not physically near
When are you less likely to aggress when frustrated?
If frustration is understandable, legitimate, or unintentional
What is the difference between absolute and relative frustration? Which is most strongly related to aggression?
Relative: when people think they have less than what they should have
Absolute: not having something (ex: being poor)
Being poor (absolute deprivation) won’t necessarily cause frustration, but being poorer than you think you should be (relative deprivation) will - relative deprivation causes frustration more often
What is provocation? Under what conditions are provocations more or less likely to lead to
aggression?
Someone or something annoying you.
If someone actively provokes you, you may reciprocate with aggression.
Less likely to reciprocate if the provocation was unintentional or there were mitigating circumstances
What is the hostile attribution bias and how does it contribute to aggression?
The judgment of intent of provocation
If it was intentional, you’re more likely to be violent. If it was unintentional, you’re less likely to be violent
What is priming? How are aggressive cues and cognitive priming related to aggression?
Witnessing something makes it more accessible to you
Cognitive priming is the repeated view of something that causes scripts. This is caused by aggressive cues - objects associated with aggression
Berkowitz & LePage (1967): What was the methodology? What were the major findings?
Angered people (by shocking them) in a room with either badminton equipment, or a gun lying around
When a gun was present, people gave more intense shocks
What is narcissism, and why is it related to aggression?
Where someone has a high view of self-importance. They typically don’t care about people. If they are provoked, insulted, humiliated, etc., they are likely to act aggressively
What is antisocial personality disorder, and why is it related to aggression?
A disorder where someone doesn’t care about others and has no regard for whether their behavior is right or wrong
They have few inhibitions against aggression, either moral or emotional and are likely to end up in prison
What is the dark triad, and why is it related to aggression?
3 personality traits that occur together - narcissism (inflated self-esteem), psychopathy (antisocial personality), and machiavellianism (manipulation)
Each contributes to aggressiveness
How is catharsis supposed to relieve aggression? Is it actually effective?
Releasing your anger is supposed to make you less likely to behave aggressively
It is ineffective; it tends to lead to more aggression over time
What did Geen et al (1975) find about acting aggressively that failed to support catharsis?
They conducted an experiment where participants were angered by being given shocks. Half were allowed to shock someone else, and half were not. Then everyone was allowed to give shocks. Those who had already given shocks gave more intense shocks
What are effective methods for reducing aggression, and why do they work?
Teach kids new skills/strategies to use instead of violence, model nonaggressive behavior and show that things can be solved in a calm manner, and allow the anger to dissipate by counting to 10 or distracting yourself
What’s the best method for dealing with someone who makes you mad?
You should talk to them and explain in a calm way what made you angry
Why do psychologists not encourage violent punishment for violent behavior? What kind of punishment does work, and why does it work?
Harsh punishment usually backfires.
1) The child might stop for now but will likely become more aggressive and antisocial over time
2) If yelled at, they might respond with anxiety/anger rather than realizing they were wrong and should fix their behavior
3) Extreme punishments, like spanking, can cause a child to develop depression, low self-esteem, violent behavior, etc
4) It tells the child what not to do, but doesn’t tell them what they should do
Mild/nonviolent punishment works
What is the dual-hormone hypothesis?
States that testosterone only relates to dominance-seeking behaviors when the stress hormone, cortisol, is low
What is the challenge hypothesis?
States that testosterone and aggression are only related when opportunities for reproduction are high
What are sexual scripts, and how can they contribute to sexual assault?
Sets of implicit rules that specify proper sexual behavior for a person in a given situation and vary according to the person’s gender, age, religion, social status, and peer group
American sexual scripts are mixed regarding the meaning of the word no
How can we counter dehumanization using empathy?
Building empathy helps aggressive acts to become more difficult to commit
