Theories of aggression Flashcards
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
Dollard et al (1939), frustration always results in aggression
Frustration is when circumstances interfere with a goal
Frustration had been found to increase aggression
Mallick and MccCandless, 1966 - Children who are frustrated by being prevented to complete a task and gain a reward were agg
Harris, 1974 - ‘frustrated’ people by cutting in front of them in queues. If closer the person was to the front of the line, the more verbally aggressive they were. closer someone is to their goal the more frustrated and, therefore aggressive, they will be
But Most studies confound frustration and retaliation against unjustified transgressions (Kremer & Stephens, 1983) - Gentry actually found a reduction in agg when frustrated if the confederate was polite - not justified
Now been amended that frustration just increases likelihood of agg (Berkowitz, 1988)
Model now less popular but still applied; e.g. As an explanation of terrorism - Rinehart argues that frustration at failure motivates acts of terrorism.
Cognitive neoassociation theory
Berkowitz (1989, 1990, 1993)
Proposed that events such as frustrations, loud noises, and uncomfortable temperatures produce negative affect. Which then stimulates defensive behaviour.
Aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behavioral tendencies are linked together in memory so when one is activated so are the others (Collins & Loftus 1975).
Provides a causal mechanism for explaining why aversive events increase aggressive inclinations, i.e., via negative affect. This model is particularly suited to explain hostile aggression, but the same priming processes are also relevant to other types of aggression.
Social learning theory
According to social learning theories (Bandura 1961) people acquire aggressive responses by direct experience or by observing others.
Takes thought processes into account in deciding if a behavior is to be imitated or not.
Children may have been responding to demand characteristics as they were brought to the location of the experiment everyday knowing that they were taking part in something a bit special - One little boy was heard to tell his mother in the car park that this is where you are ‘supposed to hit the doll’.
Bandura was also aware of potential biological factors influencing aggressive behaviour but he neglected to pay attention to these - Mirror neurons
It is limiting to describe behavior solely in terms of either nature or nurture and attempts to do this underestimate the complexity of human behavior. It is more likely that behavior is due to an interaction between nature (biology) and nurture (environment).
Not a full explanation for all behavior. This is particularly the case when there is no apparent role model in the person’s life to imitate for a given behavior.
Phillips found that USA homicides increased following major boxing matches
If we are never exposed to aggression because of culture people will never exhibit agg (!Kung sang tribe)
Scrip theory
Huesmann (1998)
When children observe violence in the mass media, they learn aggressive scripts which define situations and guide behavior.
Scripts are sets of well-rehearsed, highly associated concepts in memory, often involving causal links, goals, and action plans (Abelson 1981)
Even a few script rehearsals can change a person’s expectations and intentions involving important social behaviors (Anderson 1983).
Thus, a child who has witnessed several thousand instances of using a gun to settle a dispute on television is likely to have a very accessible script that has generalized across many situations.
This theory is particularly useful in accounting for the generalization of social learning processes and the automatization of complex perception-judgment-decision-behavioral processes.
Anderson 2010 - Violent video games = increased aggressive behaviour
Social interaction
Tedeschi & Felson 1994
Interprets aggressive behavior as social influence behavior, i.e., aggressive behaviour is used to influence the target’s behavior.
Coercive actions can be used by an actor to obtain something of value (e.g., information, money, goods, sex, services, safety), to exact retributive justice for perceived wrongs, or to bring about desired social and self identities (e.g., toughness, competence).
According to this theory, the actor is a decision-maker whose choices are directed by the expected rewards,
costs, and probabilities of outcomes.
Social interaction theory provides an explanation of aggressive acts motivated by higher level (or ultimate) goals. Even hostile aggression might have some rational
goal behind it.
General aggression model
GAM integrates mini theories of aggression into a single conceptual framework .
It is the only social–cognitive model that incorporates biological, personality development, social processes, basic cognitive processes (e.g., perception, priming), short-term and long-term processes, and decision processes into understanding aggression.
The model comprises of three distinct but interrelated stages, these being inputs, routes and outcomes.
Inputs include both person (values, attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, personality traits ) and situational factors (environment, aggressive cues.)
These in-turn influence the person’s internal state, which affect apprasial and decison making and therefore the way in which the person reacts to the situation.
GAM’s feedback loop can explain why aggressive retaliations between groups persist.
Once conflict between two groups begins, the violence escalation cycle is triggered. Group A experiences Group B’s retaliation, which causes Group A’s members to have high levels of aggressive affect and perceive Group B as hostile and aggressive. These internal states cause members of Group A to act. Group B then experiences the aggressive act from Group A, which sets in motion the same set of internal states and appraisal and decision processes that result in an even more aggressive.retaliation
Evaluation of GAM
GAM includes most if not all of the factors that can influence aggression and violence
Although it was tested primarily using laboratory aggression experiments, it can also be applied to aggression in the “real world” outside the laboratory
Attitudes can be poor predictors of specific behaviors (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977) A student’s attitude toward college is a poor predictor of whether he or she will like a particular class. - Domain-specific theories may do a better job predicting more specific behaviors.
When factors such as biology and genetics are mentioned at all, they are simply tied back to social cognition and not elaborated
Studies supporting the GAM are criticized on two main grounds, the poor validity of the aggression measures used and the failure of the studies to consider wider systems of variables which are involved in aggression (Ferguson, 2010)
Increasingly the GAM does not fit well with data from its own primary area of application (i.e. media violence) and is not able to functionally predict behavior in the real world. Indeed, the correlation between predicted inputs (i.e. media violence) and outputs (i.e. youth violence) are in exactly the opposite direction proposed by the GAM, strongly but inversely correlated at r=−.95 (Ferguson, 2010)
