Key Question Flashcards
What is the biological key question?
What are the implications for society if aggression is found to be caused by nature and not nurture?
What is the nature nurture debate?
-Nature: beh caused by genetic determinism. Inherited, neurochemical, hormonal, brain activity. Manipulated through biology (eugenics, gene therapy, brain surgery, drug therapy)
-Nurture: beh due to experiences and stimuli. Blank mind when first come into the world. Beh changed through reinforcement, watching others, anyone can be taught to do anything. Aggression learned beh
A01: what is aggression?
-Causing physical/psychological harm to other humans or objects. Physical or social aggression.
-Diff types like verbal, anger and hostility
A01: nature to describe aggression
-If agg nature then can look at brain structure, low serotonin, high dopamine and too much testosterone to explain it
-If biological may not be their fault, can’t control it, should we punish? If fix by bio treatment then should fix aggression
-If bio then may isolate, cause labelling
A01: nurture to describe aggression
-Learning topic explains that we learn it from environment, eg role models, see aggressive beh and learn it. Rewarded for showing aggressive behaviour.
A01: how is aggression viewed?
-Negative view. Extreme agg frowned upon.
-Louie Swarez bit someone’s ear, celebs hitting photographers, sometimes let off.
-Need to understand in better detail. First 6 mths lockdown, agg increased.
A02: What are the 3 theories that can explain the cause of aggression?
-Brain functioning
-Hormones
-Evolution
A02: How can brain functioning explain the cause of aggression?
-PFC: low activity associated with violence and aggression, lack restraint over social inhibitions
-Amygdala: fight and flight instinct,fear conditioning, emotions and facial recognition, damage = less fear, fight response, can’t recognise faces so continue
-Hypothalamus: NT and hormones, if oversensitive can’t read the messages and misinform hormones = low S and inc D = aggression
-Hippocampus: STM and LTM. Can’t communicate with amygdala.
A02: How can hormones explain aggression?
-Males more T. More agg. Regulates social behaviour through influence on brain areas.
-cortisol blocks T’s impact on agg. Low cortisol = aggression
-95% prisoners male, explains why males more violent and aggressive.
Evolution A02
-Aggression is an innate response, humans are aggressive because of genes passed down and natural selection
-male ancestors agg to compete and eliminate competition ensure they can reproduce
-evolution of brain so can switch on and off. Limbic and pfc - choose to be aggressive.
What are the implications to society if aggression is nature? A03
-Deterministic: no free will, not true Jim fallon, other reasons for crime like peer pressure
-Psych therapies: many T’s useless like TEP’s not going to learnt to be calm and rational as bio cause. Saying bio means should just give drugs which is invasive.
-Pre-screening: look at brain scans to see if potential criminal or not, could isolate members of society as assumed guilt already, labelling culture
-Scape goat for criminals: don’t accept responsibility for actions as predisposed, can’t rehabilitate, may as well have death penalty. Bio faulty so can’t fix
What are the applications to society? A03
-Evidence in court: Betts et al and Raine showed using brain scans as expert witness can be credible evidence as shows physical evidence that biology could be influencing factor when they committed the crime
-More effective treatments for violent criminals: testosterone therapy, make society safer. Decrease T. Increase serotonin and decrease dopamine - serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
Evidence to support
-Raine: murderers Lower activity in PFC, lower left greater right in amygdala and hippocampus, lower corpus collosum
-Charles Whitman: tumour on amygdala, killed 16 people, before was calm and not aggressive
-Wager: castrated mice, less biting attacks, when injected with T then increased biting attacks
Alt argument
-SLT
-Bandura: lab experiments, found cause and effect, children copy aggressive role models who are same sex in their environment, learn via observation
How good is the research?
-Bio can only provide correlational data, no cause and effect that certain brain structure or hormones will cause aggression, only causal link
-Hormones and brain scans are scientific and credible. Blood and saliva to find concentrations of hormones, quant no researcher bias. Brain scans show activity and structure in the brain, FMRI 1mm, credible and accurate
