The Frustration - Aggression hypothesis - Social Psychological explanations of aggression Flashcards
What is a social psychological explanation of aggression?
- Any theory that argues aggression is a result of an interaction between an individuals characteristics and features of situations the behaviour occurs in
What is the frustration - aggression hypothesis?
- A social psychological theory that argues that anger, hostility and violence are always the outcome when we are prevented from achieving our goals (frustration)
Who created the frustration - aggression hypothesis?
- John Dollard (1939)
What is the original hypothesis created by Dollard?
- Dollard and his colleagues stated that frustration always leads to aggression and aggression is always the result of frustration
- Aggression is a psychological drive such as hunger
- We experience frustration when our attempts to reach a goal is blocked by some external factor
- This creates an aggressive drive such as aggressive thoughts/behaviour or even an outburst of physical violence. This violent action acts as catharsis ( stress - reliever)
- the aggression created by frustration is therefore satisfied which reduces the drive and makes further aggression less likely
Why may our aggression not always be expressed at the source of frustration?
- The cause of our aggression may be abstract, such as the economic situation
- The cause may be too powerful and we risk punishment by aggressing against it ( for example, a teacher)
- The cause may just be unavaliable at the time
What happens if we can not act out our aggression on the direct source of frustration?
- Our aggression is deflected onto an alternative - one that is not abstract, weaker and is avaliable
What is the weapon effect?
- According to Berkowitz, the presence of aggressive cues in the environment make acting on our frustration more likely
- This was demonstrated in a lab study by Berkowitz and Lepage.
- Participants were given real electric shocks by a confederate, creating anger and frustration. The participants later had the opportunity to give fake shocks to a confederate.
- The number is shocks was greater when there were two guns on the table compared to other conditions when there none
- This weapon effect supports Berkowitz’s contention that the presence of aggressive environmental cues stimulates aggression
Who carried out research on frustration - aggression?
- Russell Geen (1968)
What was Geen’s procedure to his research?
- University students completed a jigsaw puzzle. Their level of frustration was experimentally manipulated in one of three ways
- For some the puzzle was hard to solve
- For others, they ran out of time because a confederate kept interfering
- For a third group, the Confederate insulted the participants as they failed to solve the puzzle.
- All participants had the opportunity to give the confederate electric shocks
What were Geens findings?
- The insulted participants gave the strongest shocks on average, followed by the interfered participants and then the impossible task participants
- All three groups selected more intense shocks than a non - frustrated control group
What is a strength of this research?
- One strength is that there is research support for a key concept of the frustration - aggression hypothesis
-Amy Marcus - Newhall conducted a meta- analysis of 49 studies of displaced aggression. These studies investigated situations in which aggressive behaviour had to against a human target other than the one who caused the frustration. The researchers concluded that displaced aggression was a reliable phenomenon. - Frustrated participants who were provoked but unable to retaliate directly against the source of their frustration were significantly more likely to aggress against an innocent party than people who were not provoked.
- This shows that frustration can lead to aggression against a weaker or more available target
What is a limitation of the frustration - aggression hypothesis
- one limitation is research showing that aggression may not be cathartic
- Brad Bushman (2002) found that participants who vented their anger by repeatedly hitting a punchbag actually became more aggressive rather than less.
- Doing nothing was more effective at reducing aggression rather than venting
- Bushman argues that using venting to reduce anger is like using petrol to put out a fire. It does not work even for people who believe in its value.
- Bushman stated that ‘ the better people feel after venting, the more aggressive they are’. This shows that the central assumption of the FA hypothesis may not be valid
What is another limitation of the FA hypothesis?
- The frustration- aggression link
- It becomes clear that frustration does not always lead to aggression and that aggression can also occur without frustration. There is nothing automatic about the link between the two.
- People who feel frustrated may behave in a range of different ways. Rather than being aggressive, they may instead be helpless or determined. Likely someone may behave aggressively for different reasons.
- This shows that the FA hypothesis is inadequate because it only explains how aggression arises in some situations but not in others
Counterpoint =
- However, Berkowitz reformulated the initial hypothesis to take account of the above criticism. His negative affect theory argued that frustration is just one of many averse stimuli that create negative feelings (affect) -others include loneliness, jealousy and pain
- Aggressive behaviour is triggered by these negative feelings generally rather than by frustration specifically. The outcome of frustration can be a range of responses, only one of which is aggressiom. For example, you may be frustrated at getting a poor grade and become despairing, anxious or determined. Therefore frustration can form part of a wider explanation of what causes aggression.
