Lecture 12: Aggression

Question 0

What are the two types of aggression? Define them.

Answer 0

1. Hostile aggression: when you use aggression to relieve feelings of pain and anger. Hostile acts aim to inflict pain or injury for it’s own sake
2. Instrumental aggression: when you inflict pain in order to achieve a goal.

Question 1

What is aggression according to social psychology?

Answer 1

an act that is intended to harm someone who does not want to be harmed.

Question 2

What are the 5 factors that increase aggression?

Answer 2

1. Negative feelings
2. Aggressive cues
3. Learning
4. Individual differences
5. Alcohol

Question 3

What is the Frustration- Aggression model?

Answer 3

The frustration - aggression model says that if a person becomes frustrated then they are more likely to become aggressive

Question 4

What did a study on the Frustration Aggression theory find?

Answer 4

Children were either told that they had to wait to play with a toy or were immediately given the toy to play with (frustration v. No frustration). They found that the children who were deprived of the toy demonstrated more aggressive behaviour towards the toy when they were permitted to play with it

Question 5

When is frustration greater….

Answer 5

When they are close to achieving their goals

And when an obstacle is unexpected

Question 6

When is frustration less likely to occur?

Answer 6

When the action was unintended, understandable and legitimate.
When the person who would have had the violent act committed towards them is bigger and stronger

Question 7

What are negative feelings can cause aggression?

Answer 7

Pain 
Heat 
Offensive odours 
Air pollution 
Provocation (but if a reason for it is rationale people are more understanding)

Question 8

What are some limits to the idea that negative feelings cause aggression?

Answer 8

As Negative feelings increase, so does aggression but only up to a certain point

Positive feelings can cancel out negative feelings and reduce aggression

Question 9

What did the weapons study find on the effect that aggressive cues has on aggression?

Answer 9

The weapons study had people either being angered by receiving shocks from a confederate or not being angered by not receiving any shocks. They then put them in a room with either no object, a gun or a badminton racquet and measured how aggressive they were in each. There was no effect on the people who were unangered and the object in the room but when the people were angered, the object (eg gun) made a significant difference

Question 10

How does learning lead to aggression?

Answer 10

Learning is directly or indirectly experiencing rewards/ punishments for actions which leads to future aggressive behaviours.

Question 11

What is positive reinforcement for aggressive learning?

Answer 11

When an aggressive act produces a desired outcome

Question 12

What is negative reinforcement of learning aggression?

Answer 12

When an aggressive act produces an undesired outcome

Question 13

What did Bandura say the Social Learning theory was?

Answer 13

He said that indirect experience (eg. Watching someone else) can effect the likelihood of future aggression

Question 14

What is the Bodo Doll experiment and what did they find?

Answer 14

The Bodo Doll experiment was where they had children watch same sex and opposite sex adults either react friendly or aggressively to a doll. The children were then given the opportunity to play with the doll and they found that the children who watched the aggressive adults were also aggressive towards the doll. They both mirrored and thought of other ways to be aggressive towards it. Boys were also more aggressive towards the doll then boys

Question 15

What the two correlations between exposure to violent media and aggression?

Answer 15

Firstly that there is a correlation between children who watched violent tv and aggressiveness in teenage years

Secondly, that there is a correlation between adolescents and young adults that watch violent tv and aggressive acts towards others (and this controlled for 3rd variables like income, neighbourhood etc)

Question 16

What experimental evidence is there for aggressiveness and violent tv?

Answer 16

Liebert and Barron assigned children to watch a non violent or violent tv program and measured how willing the children were to help out another child . Children who watched the violent tv program were more aggressive to the other child

Question 17

What is culture of honour and where is it prominent in the US?

Answer 17

Culture of honour is the emphasise that is placed upon honour and status within the southern states of the US. Aggression is used to protect this honour

Question 18

What test was conducted to test the effect honour on aggression?

Answer 18

Participants were selected to represent northern and Southern States of the US. They were then instructed to walk down a hallway and deliver a letter, in the mean time a confederate would either bump into them and insult them or avoid them. Both behavioural patterns (firmness of handshake and chicken game) and hormonal levels (cortisol and testosterone where tested. Men from the southern states were significantly higher than the northerners on all tests. (Handshake was firmer, they came closer the the confederate, they had higher levels of cortisol and testosterone)

Question 19

What is narcissism and how can it affect aggression?

Answer 19

Narcissism is an over exaggeration of the self esteem. It usually occurs to protect the fragile self esteem by over compensating. Narcissism can lead to aggressive behaviours when someone else threatens this self esteem

Question 20

What study was conducted on narcissism ?

Answer 20

Narcissist people were given either positive or negative feedback on an essay and their reaction to this feedback was measured by looking at the length of the blast to was given to the critiquer. Narcissist people who were insulted gave the longest blasts and therefore acted the most aggressively

Question 21

How does alcohol affect aggression and what is the called?

Answer 21

Alcohol heightens the senses and focuses on the most salient things when drunk. However, when drunk people don’t have the inhibitory cues that prevent people from thinking through situations and therefore they react. This is called alcohol myopia

Question 22

What experiment was conducted to look at the effects of alcohol myopia?

Answer 22

Participants were either given a placebo or some alcohol. They then were in a situation where they received shocks from a confederate and if they retaliated the confederate would up the shocks. The participants who had alcohol gave more blasts back to the confederate without considering the consequences. Therefore demonstrating alcohol myopia

Question 23

What is the effect of physical punishment on reducing aggression? What evidence supports this?

Answer 23

Physical punishment can prohibit future aggressive behaviour although it is likely to backfire because the parent/guardian is modelling aggressive behaviour and the child could learn this. People measured how much children were spanked when young and how much antisocial behaviour they had in later years and found a strong correlation.

Question 24

When is punishment effective?

Answer 24

When it is received straight after the behaviour
When it’s severity matches that of the crime (see as legitimate)
When it is consistent and certain
When it is strong enough to deter people from doing it again
Not too harsh- harsh punishments don’t make people internalise behaviour

Question 25

What is catharsis?

Answer 25

Catharsis is when people attempt to release aggression or blow off steam by doing another aggressive acts. However it has been proven to be ineffective

Question 26

What study shows catharsis is ineffective?

Answer 26

All participants were angered by a confederate and half of them were given the opportunity to the shock the confederate in retaliation. Later on, all ps were given opportunity to shock confederate and found that ps who gave the shock the first time were more likely to give it the second time.

Question 27

What is a study that shows the effect of empathy on aggression??

Answer 27

30 students completed a course on empathy which taught children to put themselves in others shoes. And they found that the children who completed this course were more empathetic, had higher self esteems, were more generous and less aggressive

Question 28

So what is effective in decreasing aggression?

Answer 28

Punishment (but not physical)
Not catharsis (it backfires)
Empathy !