Lecture 9 - Aggression Flashcards
What is aggression according to Bandura?
“Behaviour that results in personal injury or destruction of property”
What are the two types of aggression?
Instrumental aggression and emotional aggression
What is instrumental aggression?
- Is rational
- Used by the individual in order to maximise personal gains
What is emotional aggression?
- Is reactive and impulsive
- Is driven by emotions (e.g., anger) often in the absence of rational cost-benefit analysis
What are the methodological issues of studying aggression?
- We can observe aggression
- Is it ethical to make people act aggressively towards others?
What did Freud say about the biological factors of aggression?
aggression stems from a death wish (“Thanatos”) that we all possess. Instinct for self-destruction aimed outwards.
What did Lorenz say about the biological factors of aggression?
Aggression springs from an inherited “fighting instinct” where strongest males obtain mates and pass on their genes
What is the evolutionary theory of aggression?
- Evolutionary psychology rests on assumption that individual behaviour is guided by a force that is beyond the conscious awareness of the individual
- Evolution is unknowable and immeasurable – support has to be observed indirectly and inferred from behaviour
What is the social learning theory of aggression?
- Skinner argued that behaviour is displayed and maintained to the extent that it is associated with rewards (i.e. it is reinforced)
- Bandura (1977) Social Learning Theory
- Any social behaviour can be learned via:
- Direct experience through which individual is rewarded for behaviour
- Indirect experience through which individual observes others being rewarded for behaviour
What was them aim of Bandura, Ross & Ross (1963) study?
Bandura examined how aggression might be learned through observing others
What was the method of Bandura, Ross & Ross study?
- To explore this he conducted studies in which young children witnessed an adult attack a doll across a number of conditions:
- Live
- Videoed
- Cartoon
- Control
What were the results of Bandura, Ross & Ross study?
In all three experimental conditions, children showed significantly more aggressive behaviour towards a doll themselves as compared to the control group
What was the conclusion of Bandura, Ross & Ross’ study?
- Bandura concluded that aggressive behaviour might be learned both directly and indirectly
- For example, through exposure to aggressive role-models
- Learned aggressive behaviour may generalize to different situations and across time
What is the critique of the social learning theory of aggression?
- What did children’s behaviour in the Bobo doll experiments mean?
- Were they being aggressive or were they playing?
- Cross-sectional study – was this behaviour learned and stable over time?
- Aggressive role models don’t always lead to imitation
- Bandura’s effects varied based on gender of child and role model – same-gender imitation more likely
What are the pros of the social learning theory of aggression?
- Can’t be explained exclusively by evolved aggressive drive
- Evidence for observed violence up for debate
- What other psychological mechanisms can help explain aggression?
What was the method of Fischer, Kastenmüller & Greitemeyer (2010) study on the self?
- Examined the role of self in video games – is playing as your own personalised character related to aggression?
- Participants played aggressive vs. non-aggressive games
- Personalised character or not
What were the results of Fischer, Kastenmüller & Greitemeyer (2010) study?
Those who played a personalised character in aggressive games showed more aggression than a non-personalised character
Is heat a situational determinant of aggression?
- Explaining the long hot summer effect – emotional processes?
- Physical discomfort increases irritation and reactive anger
- Also evidence that extreme cold is related to aggression (crop failures, economic frustration, scape-goating; Oster, 2004)
- Not temperature itself – social and psychological consequences of environmental forces à aggression
What did Anderson, Bushman, & Groom (1997) find was the correlation of aggression and heat?
- Examined crime rates and temperature between 1950 and 1995 in 50 cities in the US
- Positive relationship between temperature and serious/deadly assaults (but not for property crime – why might this difference exist?)
Does alcohol increase aggression?
- Giancola et al. (2009)
- Participants (n = 526) assigned to alcohol or placebo group
- Aggression measure – electric shocks delivered to opponent in ostensibly competitive interpersonal task (intensity and duration)
- Alcohol increased aggression for both male and female participants
- Effect was stronger for male participants
What is the explanation of the alcohol effect on aggression?
- Bartholow et al. (2003) – examined effects of alcohol on focus of attention and response inhibition
- Examined event related potentials (brain electrical activity), alcohol influenced response competition in accuracy but not response time – effect on response selection
- Alcohol impairs cognitive functioning and the ability to evaluate other’s intentions and effects of one’s own behaviour
What is the drive theory of aggression?
- Aggression stems from external events → activate internal drive to harm others
- e.g., Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
What is the general aggression model?
- Two major input variables interact – situational and person factors to impact affect/cognition/arousal
- Repeated exposure to aggression can strengthen knowledge structures and result in easier activation by situational and person factors
Why do societies punish aggressive acts?
- Widespread belief that such acts deserve to be punished (“punishment should fit the crime”)
- Discourage others from such acts → aggressive acts that are hard to detect ought to be punished more severely
- Safety concerns → remove “dangerous” individuals from society
Under what conditions can punishment reduce aggression?
- Prompt - follows aggression as quickly as possible
- Certain to occur – probability that it will follow aggression must be high
- Strong – highly unpleasant to potential recipients
- Justified – perceived by recipients as deserved
What is self-regulation as a control for aggression?
- Lashing out at others in response to every provocation is not adaptive – require internal mechanisms for self control
- Cognitive control required – mechanism can be depleted
- DeWall et al. (2007) – ego depletion by resisting urge to eat a doughnut, participants then show higher levels of aggression if provoked
What is the catharsis hypothesis as a control for aggression?
if individuals vent their anger in a nonharmful context, their tendencies to engage in more dangerous types of aggression will be reduced (Dollard et al., 1939)
Why doesn’t catharsis work?
- Anger increases the amount people think about upsetting stimuli → activation of aggressive thoughts and feelings
- Ambiguous actions more likely to be perceived as hostile
- Positive catharsis effects - only short term?
- Emotional short-term benefits but long-term strengthening of aggressive response?
