Lecture 7- Agg Flashcards
What did Hobbes (1651) say about agg?
Believed that extreme levels of aggression are natural for human beings.
What do all definitions of behaviour have in common?
They all specify intent to harm
What did Chermack et al (1997) find about lab agg translating to real world?
Studied subjects who competes against an opponent in a reaction time game. After each trial, the loser received a shock at low/high provocation and found when inducing anger, they acted more agg with shocks to the other person
How does gaming link to agg?
We use media as a model for our behavior, or it acts as a ‘hypodermic needle’ and is injected into people who engage with it.
What is the problem of suggesting the link between gaming and agg?
Not standardized agg but the selective use of measures that can make effects seem bigger than they are eg asking ppts to estimate their own agg.
-Also struggles to account for real world crime rates as engagement with gaming has increased but crime has fallen
What does Kennedy et al (2014) say about emotion induced blindness?
Found those who played violent video games were less distracted by violent images in other contexts
What are the 2 types of agg?
Innate- universal and builds up till explosion
Social- context can explain agg
What is the psychodynamic theory?
-Innate ‘death instinct’ (Thanatos) in which theorised anger is initially directed at self-destruction but as we develop, it becomes directed towards others. -Agg builds up naturally and must be released
What is the ethological persecutive of agg?
Suggested that aggression has a survival value so is considered a functional view of society.
What is the dual-factor theory of agg?
(Lorenz, 1966)
suggests we have both innate urges to aggress (inevitable) but also aggressive behavior elicited by environmental stimuli (releaser). Lorenz suggested that with people (fighting instinct) energy builds up and is released on another provocative behaviour of someone else.
What is the evolutionary theory of agg?
Suggests that social behavior is adaptive and helps the individual and species to survive. -Agg behavior has evolved to allow to procreate and pass on genes to next generation and provide social and economic advantage
What are the problems with the theories of agg?
-Limited evidence for psychodynamic. -Ethological account struggles to explain functional value of agg in humans
-Evolutionary takes limited empirical evidence and claims to use circular reasoning.
What is the frustration-agg hypothesis?
Suggests the occurrence of agg behavior always presupposes the existence of frustration and the existence of frustration always leads to some form of agg.
-If target too powerful, unavailable or not a person, then displace aggression onto alternative target.
What does Barker et al (1941) say about the frustration-agg hypothesis?
Children shown room full of toys and either initially not allowed to play with them or allowed to play without waiting. Results- Frustrated group acted more agg eg smashed toys, destruction.
How did Berkowitz (1962) criticise the frustration-agg hypothesis?
Suggested frustration does not always lead to agg as aversive effects and situational cues Suggests frustration is ill-defined.
What is the excitation transfer (Zillmann, 1979)?
Expression of agg is function of 3 factors:
-Learnt agg
-Arousal/excitation from another source -Persons interpretation of arousal state eg agg response seems appropriate.
How does type A personality affect agg?
Striving to achieve, competitiveness, more conflict with peers and subordinates but not superiors.
How does heat affect agg levels?
Heat is suggested to have independent effect on agg Priming experiments suggest ppts were shown images and words commonly associated with heat and found they were more likely to perceive neutral facial expressions as agg.
What did Anderson (2001) say about link between heat and violence?
Suggests that hotter areas have higher violent crime rates even when controlling for confounding factors.
How does presence of a weapon affect agg?
Men took part and either held gun or child’s toy and found holding the gun increased agg.
Also, Berkowitz + LePage (1967) found if angered, ppts gave more electric shocks in presence of weapon.
How does alcohol affect agg levels?
Intoxicated participants behave more aggressively and respond to provocations more strongly.
Also, low aggressors became more aggressive when intoxicated, whereas high aggressors did not.
How do levels of narcissism affect agg?
Study by Bushman & Baumeister (1998) studied ppts who wrote either pro-life or pro-choice essay on abortion and found narcissistic participants gave the person whom they thought that had criticised their easy louder bursts but not other participants. Showed they had direct agg at those who criticised their self-image
What is the general agg model?
GAM is a comprehensive, integrative framework for understanding human aggression. It considers the role of social, cognitive, developmental, and biological factors in aggression.
