What are some of the definitions for aggression?
- Behaviour that results in personal injury or the destruction of property (Bandura, 1973)
- Behaviour intended to harm another of the same species (Scherer et al., 1975)
- Behaviour directed towards the goal of harming on injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment (Baron, 1977)
- The intentional infliction of some form of harm on others (Baron and Byrne, 2000)
- Behaviour directed towards another individual carried out with the proximate (immediate) intention to cause harm (Anderson and Heusmann, 2003)
To summarise, aggressive behaviour is the intention to harm or injure others.
What are the conditions for behaviour to be aggressive?
Aversive stimulus:
• Direct: Physical force (pushing, hitting etc)
• Indirect: Verbal/social relational (name-calling, exclusion or damaging someone’s social standing)
Intentional
• Aggressor is motivated to cause harm
• Can’t be accidental
Victim should be motivated to escape
• Victim should want to avoid the stimulus (rare situations where this is not the case, such as atonement) – punishing one’s self to make amends for an atonement purpose does not count as it’s consensual)
What is affective/reactive aggression?
Reaction to a trigger; intention to cause harm.
it’s emotional and not always premeditated. Overall aim is to cause harm to the other person. It’s like an instant reaction to some kind of environmental trigger.
What is Instrumental/proactive aggression?
Motivated by concerns greater than risk of harm.
still aggressive, but it’s more of a means to an end e.g., war or sport. The aggressive act is pre-meditated but somewhat justified for a reason/ ‘greater good’.
What are some personal factors (factors that people bring to the situation themselves) that lead to aggressive behaviour?
- Hormones
- Personality
- Gender
- Alcohol
Why are hormones a factor of causing aggression?
- Testosterone is linked to aggression
* Don’t know if there’s correlational or causal relationship with hormones
How is personality a factor of aggression?
Lots of research has been done to examine whether there’s an aggressive personality type. However, these relationships aren’t very strong.
• Low self-esteem and frustration intolerance observed in violent offenders
• However also linked to narcissistic (inflated esteem) and Type A (competitive) personality types
• Relationship between personality factors, like self-esteem, are non-linear, (u-shaped relationship)
How is gender a factor of aggression?
- Some evidence women are less aggressive (outstanding question of the extent to which this is linked to hormones or socialisation)
- Men more overt (physical) aggression; women more indirect
- Similar levels of verbal aggression in similar contexts
(In studies where we’ve looked at a similar context of aggressive behaviour, both men and women display similar levels of aggression. The difference we see in men and women may be either due to differences in hormones or differences in socialisation – where it’s more acceptable for women for example to display verbal aggression whereas overt acts of aggression may be more acceptable culturally in men.)
Why is alcohol a factor of aggression?
- Disinhibition (less cortical control, behaviour becomes more primitive).
- Well established link with aggression – people who drink become aggressive.
What are the limitations of aggression being operationalised in the studies looking at personal factors?
- In general people like to display themselves in a positive light so there are biases in any sort of self-report study.
- Another thing is how realistic the harms are in comparison to aggression in the real world. Most people will deduce that harm won’t come to any of the participant’s/ confederates.
- Overall correlation between testosterone and aggression is very small (r=.14) meaning that only 2% of the variance is shared. The impact of testosterone is overstated as it only explains 2% of the individual differences in aggressive behaviour.
- Correlations cannot establish causality.
What are some situational/societal factors that may lead to aggression?
Physical environment
Cultural norms
How are cultural norms a factor in aggressive behaviour?
- Heat - prolonged hot weather linked to domestic violence, suicide and collective violence (e.g. London riots) up to a point, (trails off when it gets too hot)
- Crowding (both personal space and population density – hence more violence in cities) – also see increased aggression in prisons and psychiatric wards when there’s overcrowding
How is the physical environment a factor in aggressive behaviour?
- Cultural variation in aggressive behaviour
* Subcultures where aggression and violence are perhaps more accepted (e.g., gang culture)
How might someone go from hot weather to aggressive behaviour?
Might feel frustrated with feeling hot, sweaty and dehydrated and take it out as aggressively.
Interaction between personal and situational factors is important – e.g. in hot weather, we drink more alcohol which in turn creates more aggression.
What are some factors leading to crowd bating?
- Night time
- Large crowd
- Warm temperature
- Long duration
- Crowd distant from the victim
- Cities?
Other than situational factors what else might lead to crowd bating?
Deindividuation – larger crowd and dark outside may have led to deindividualization as they are less likely to be caught and punished
Dehumanisation – a far distance could result in dehumanisation.
(These aren’t situational factors)
What is deindividuation?
A sense of anonymity and loss of identity, therefore a reduced likelihood of punishment.
What is dehumanisation?
Stigma, viewing the victim as ‘inhuman’
How is culture a factor in collective aggressive?
- Western demographic nations view democracy, human rights and non-violence as core values… but violence is more common US (Geen, 2001 pg76).
- Variations in cultural norms around aggression linked to historical and geographical factors (E.g. history of invasions, competition for resources where it has been necessary to display aggressive behaviour to survive)
- Societies that still practice non-aggressive lifestyles are generally small communities and are relatively isolated from competitors.
- What is perceived as instrumental aggression (aggression for a greater cause rather than harm) may vary across cultures
How are subcultures a factor of collective aggression?
- Football hooliganism: ritualised aggression (not always violent) linked to social status, group norms and values – not acceptable in other situations.
- Gangs: violence may be seen as a part of life, an acceptable way of solving disputes. Initiations involve ritualised violence (see page 481 of core reading)
What is the argument for evolutionary accounts of aggression?
Aggression is pre-programmed from birth, the evidence for this is that we see aggression across human society and in animals. The idea that aggression must have a purpose as it’s evolved over time so must be useful.
What are the theories of aggression as an instinct?
- Psychodynamic theory - build up of tension that needs release.
- Ethology - Innate, adaptive instinct elicited by situation.
- Evolutionary social psych - Innate, survival mechanism.
How does Darwin (1872) show aggression as an evolutionary account?
- Same emotional states across species (evolved, adaptive and useful)
- Indicate what the animal will do next
- If beneficial will evolve and enhance communication
- Opposite signals expressed by opposite movements (e.g., submission vs aggression)
- Form of social competence (learn when aggression is appropriate) – useful to predict what another person or animal will do next. Over time helps you learn when to run or attack.
- Some social learning implied even in biological accounts. Learning when it’s appropriate to respond or not is implied in these accounts. We have this innate, biologically programmed sensitivity to emotional states and it serves an adaptive purpose because it allows us to learn how to respond appropriately.
How is aggression a form of communication?
- Aggression is a form of communication in humans as well as animals
- Threat displays in humans indicate impending aggression (facing up, squaring up, displays of weapons) can be culturally specific
- If recognised by the opponent, harm can be avoided (=survival benefit)
