Social-Psychological Explanations for Aggression Flashcards
What causes aggression according to Dollard et al?
According to the frustration-aggression hypothesis, aggression was the result of frustration. Frustration is caused when people are prevented from getting something they want.
What can inhibit aggressive behaviours in some situations?
Contextual factors, such as threat of punishment could inhibit aggressive behaviour in some situations.
What is catharsis?
How is the frustration-aggression hypothesis linked to catharsis?
Catharsis is a form of emotional release that is achieved by the person engaging in aggressive behaviour or having aggressive thoughts about the target.
Frustration leads to the arousal of an aggressive drive, which leads to aggressive behaviour as a form of relief, so has a cathartic effect on the individual.
What increases frustration?
What did Brown et al find?
Frustration increases when our motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expect gratification, and when there is nothing we can do about it.
Brown et al did a survey of British holidaymakers who couldn’t travel by ferry as they planned to, this increased their hostility towards French people due to their frustration.
What did Doob and Sears investigate and find?
What did Pastore find?
Doob and Sears asked participants to imagine how they would feel in a number of different frustrating situations, such as waiting for a bus which went by without stopping. Most participants reported that they would feel angry in all of the frustrating situations.
Pastore distinguished between justified and unjustified frustration, arguing that it was mainly the latter that produced anger and aggression. Pastore produced different versions of the situations used by Doob and Sears but this time using situations involving justified as well as unjustified frustration. Under the justified frustration condition participants expressed much lower levels of anger.
What happens when people are frustrated according to the frustration aggression hypothesis?
What does Dollard say about the aggression?
They experience a drive to be aggressive towards the object of their frustration. However, because it is often impossible or inappropriate to behave aggressively towards the source of frustration, any attempt to be a great aggressive is inhibited.
Aggression is sometimes displaced from the source of the frustration onto someone else or thing. This is known as “kicking the dog” effect because a person may attack a dog rather than the source of frustration. Therefore, in order to experience catharsis, a scapegoat needs to be found.
What was the aim of Green’s experiment?
What was Green’s procedure?
What were the findings in Green’s experiment?
Green wanted to investigate the effects of frustration on aggression.
Male uni students were given the task of completing a jigsaw. Their frustration was experimentally manipulated. Some participants were given an impossible puzzle to solve. Others ran out of time because another student (confederate) kept interfering. The third group had a confederate who insulted the participants as they failed to solve the puzzle. The next part of the study involved the participants giving shocks to the confederate when the confederate made a mistake on another task.
The insulted participants gave the strongest shocks on average, followed by the interfered group, then the impossible task participants. All three groups selected more intense shocks than a (non-frustrated) control group.
How can the Frustration aggression hypothesis be applied to real-life (AO3)?
Staub has used the frustration-aggression hypothesis to explain mass killings. Killings are often rooted in the frustration caused by social and economic difficulties within society. The frustration leads to scapegoating, then discrimination, and aggression towards the scapegoated group. This supports the frustration-aggression hypothesis and shows it can be applied to real life. For example, the Holocaust occurred because Germany was experiencing an economic downfall forcing extreme poverty. German people displaced their frustration of the social and economic difficulties onto Jews by making them a scapegoat which allowed the unethical treatment of Jews to occur. This shows the frustration-aggression hypothesis can be extended to outside of the lab, so increases its external validity.
What is a limitation of the frustration aggression hypothesis?
Bushman found participants who vented their anger by repeatedly hitting a punching bag actually became more angry and aggressive rather than less. Doing nothing was more effective at reducing aggression rather than venting anger which is the opposite advice to what therapists currently give.
This opposes the frustration-aggression hypothesis specifically that idea of catharsis (emotional release through aggressive behaviour) because it indicates aggressive behaviour leads to greater feelings of aggression. This reduces the internal validity of the frustration-aggression hypothesis and indicates that it should not be applied to real life, as it will only make feelings of aggression worse.
Alternatively, Bushman suggests to reduce aggression people should delay the anger by doing activities like counting, they should do relaxing activities like taking a walk, and activities that are incompatible with aggression such as charity work.
Is there a better theory of aggression than the frustration hypothesis theory? (AO3)
It became clear from research that frustration does not always lead to aggression, and that aggression can occur without frustration. So, according to Berkowitz’s negative affect theory frustration is just one of the many aversive stimuli that create negative feelings; others include jealousy, pain, and loneliness. So aggressive behaviour is triggered by negative feelings generally (such as anger) rather than by frustration specifically. Furthermore, the outcome can be a range of responses, only one of which is aggression. For example, the frustration someone experiences at getting a low-grade for an essay might not necessarily lead to aggression but to despair, anxiety, helplessness, or determination.
This indicates the frustration hypothesis theory is too simplistic, as it can only explain how aggression arises in some situations but not others. This means the extent to which it can be applied to real-life is limited. Perhaps, Berwitz’s negative affect theory could be a better explanation of aggression as it considers other causes and effects of aggression.
Is the frustration-aggression hypothesis supportive of nature or nurture? (AO3)
The biological approach believes aggression is caused by genetic factors, not by frustration or the environment as a frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests. For example, there is evidence that low levels of MAOA gene can lead to more aggressive behaviour. This opposes the frustration-aggression hypothesis as it suggests aggressive behaviour is due to nature (biological factors) rather than nurture.
