Week 5-Aggression Flashcards
What is a ‘Type A’ vs ‘Type B’ personality? (Friedman & Rosenman, 1959)
-Overactive, achievement oriented competitive (A) VS quiet, easy going, relaxed (B)
-People with Type A personalities tend to be more aggressive (especially in competitive environments)
What evidence supports type A personalities?
- Type A more aggressive to competitors than those with a Type B personality (Carver & Glass, 1978)
- Managers who are type A were more in conflict with peers and those who work under them (Baron, 1989)
- ‘Type A’ personality linked to higher driving anger compared to ‘type B’ personality (Feng et al., 2017)
Is personality a dimension or a category?
-Dimension as people may possess traits from either Type A or B rather than have that personality fully
-Outdated research practices and measurement instruments in older research
Is personality a dimension or a category?
-Dimension as people may possess traits from either Type A or B rather than have that personality fully
-Outdated research practices and measurement instruments in older research
What is the Big Five?
Openess
Conscientousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
How have personality traits been linked to aggression?
*For example, Barlett and Anderson (2012) found that
Openness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism predicted self
-reported physical aggression and violent behaviours
*Overall, personality traits can be seen as individual dispositions or ‘risk factors’ for aggressive behaviours
How can alcohol affect our brain?
-effects cortical control where thinking and other cognitive functions are carried out
-Alcohol myopia: narrows our attention to provocative cues in our environment (Giancola et al., 2010)
-Affects emotional processing and increases activity in other more primitive areas e.g., areas that affect breathing, heartbeat
What’s the link between alcohol and aggression?
-There’s a causal link between alcohol consumption and aggressive behaviour (Bartholow et al., 2003; Bartholow & Heinz, 2006; Giancola, 2003)
-Non-regular alcohol drinkers become more aggressive when they drink (LaPlace et al., 1994)
Alcohol can even affect aggression through priming or placebo:
* Participants who thought they had consumed alcohol more aggressive even if they were given a non-alcohol cocktail (Begue et al., 2009)
* Priming alcohol-related words increased aggression (Pedersen et al, 2014)
Does alcohol always lead to aggression?
-Not every alcohol consumer will act aggressively
-Factors such as your expectancy effect when you consume alcohol (Beck & Heinz, 2013) OR cues in the environment (Giancola et al., 2011) are also important
What’s disinhibition?
A reduction in social rules that stop us from behaving anti-social, immoral, illegally (aka aggressively)
-one of the ways in which alcohol can be associated with aggression
How can disinhibition occur in online contexts aka the ‘online disinhibition effect’? (Suler, 2004)
- People often do and say things online that they wouldn’t ordinarily do in the face-to-face world
- Suler (2004) outlines six factors to explain online disinhibition
Suler’s (2004) 6 factors: What’s Dissociative anonymity?
-Online behaviour can be completely anonymous which can make people behave differently than they do in real life
-separation of offline and online identity
Suler’s (2004) 6 factors: What’s invisibility?
-Not feeling seen or heard amplifies the ‘online disinhibition effect’ and gives the courage to do things you wouldn’t normally do
-Online spaces means no eye contact or face-to-face visibility
Suler’s (2004) 6 factors: What’s Asynchronicity?
Emails or words online aren’t always immediately seen after you’ve sent them meaning you don’t have to cope with someone’s immediate response
Suler’s (2004) 6 factors: What’s Solipsistic introjection
-Feeling like you know people who are online merging theirs and your identity together
-You make up conversations with them and feel like you can tell them anything contributing to disinhibited behaviour
Suler’s (2004) 6 factors: What’s dissociative imagination?
- Feeling that one’s online persona lives in a make-believe dimension
- Online fiction separated from offline fact
- Seeing the online world as a game where social rules and norms don’t apply
Suler’s (2004) 6 factors: What’s Minimisation of authority?
- Online environment can feel as a peer-to-peer relationship
- Absence of authority figure may make people more willing to speak out and (potentially) misbehave
What’s deindividuation?
Situational changes that make people lose their identity and
therefore influence the level of aggression exhibited.
* Lowers the perceived likelihood of being punished
* Presence of others (other people won’t see me do it)
* Anonymity (they won’t know who it was)
* Diffusion of responsibility (I’m not
responsible)
* Group size (greater the group, the greater the DoR)
* Collective aggression such as crowd baiting (Mann, 1981)