Lecture 12- Aggression

Question 1

What is the general definition for aggression?

Answer 1

Behaviour intended to cause physical or psychological harm to another person

Question 2

Why is aggression hard to define?

Answer 2

It’s essentially a social construct. There is also many things to consider:

• Intention (instrumental versus hostile, personalism?)
• Magnitude of harm (hedonic relevance?)
• Social context/rules: in situations where aggression is normal e.g. war is it still aggression?
• Self-aggression?
• Physical versus emotional/social harm?
• Victim’s perception
• “Concept creep”

Question 3

What is the difference between instrumental and hostile agression?

Answer 3

• Instrumental= for a cause/ as a by product of pursuing some goal
• Hostile= you attend to harm the person

Question 4

What is concept creep?

Answer 4

Where concept has expanded over time to include things that weren’t originally a factor e.g. verbally assaulted= concept creep of physical assault.

Question 5

What are the two broad theories for why aggression comes about?

Answer 5

• Biological approach: aggression is ‘instinct’
• Learning approach: aggression is result of environment

This is the classic nature versus nurture debate although need to be careful as it rarely just one or another

Question 6

In the biological approach to aggression what is the role of the state?

Answer 6

It’s in human nature to be aggressive and because of that if people are left to their own devices it would be chaos. The role of society/state is therefore to keep people in line. We sign a ‘social contract’ taking away some of our individual control but ultimately for the good of everyone.

Question 7

What was Freud’s view of aggression?

Answer 7

• Aligned with the biological approach
• He believed that there was a death instinct to harm ourselves and that when this was turned externally aggression arises.
• Society keeps the death instinct and aggression in check and this is internalized by the superego in order for us to exhibit socially acceptable behaviours

Question 8

What was Lorenz approach to aggression with and example?

Answer 8

Thought aggression was as a result of external cues and it has a functional purpose e.g. aggression as response to crowding has effect of reducing population size.

Question 9

What was Darwin’s thoughts on aggression?

Answer 9

• Aggression as an adaptation
• Adaptions are solutions that we have evolved to solve adaptive problems
• Adaptive problems are thus which recur over time and impact the likelihood of successful reproduction e.g. acquiring resources; enhancing status; defense; sexual rivalry; discourage infidelity; acquire/retain mates

Question 10

What are some things to consider with regards to adaptions?

Answer 10

• Not all adaptations are (currently) functional, and vice versa (there are things that used to be functional that are no longer e.g. appendix)
• Not everything evolved is good (Naturalistic phalicy: just because it’s natural doesn’t mean we should not override it).

Question 11

What was found when Crabb, P. B. (2000) asked participants “Have you ever wanted to kill someone”?

Answer 11

Aggression or at least thoughts or aggression were shown to be relatively wide spread but not so much towards family (adaptive reason to protect one’s own). Top reasons were a trivial dispute and a lover’s quarrel.

Question 12

What did Diener, E., Fraser, S. C., Beaman, A. L., & Kelem, R. T. find with regards to loosening social constructs (Halloween study)?

Answer 12

• Told children to only take 1 piece of candy
• Found that those who were wearing a mask or in a big group were a lot more likely to lie/ steal the candy (antisocial behaviour). This is because in these cases anonymity was increased.

Question 13

What is deindividuation?

Answer 13

• The loss of self-awareness
• This is when being in a group leads to a failure in attending to your own values and therefore a loss in sense of self. This can cause violence.

Question 14

How did Zimbardo’s Sandford prison study show the effect of deindividualization?

Answer 14

• Participants assigned to be prisoners or guards
• People got very into their roles
• Reason: Guards became deindividuated (glasses, uniforms, group)
• Zimbardo is a big believer in the power of the situation in getting individuals to do things

Question 15

How does the bobo doll study by Bandura support aggression as a learned behaviour? What name is this theory given?

Answer 15

Children acted more aggressively to doll when modelled aggressive behaviour towards it (most effect when live, then video, then cartoon) when compare to just being left to own devices (works against aggression as instinct)
Social learning theory

Question 16

Relating back to the study where participants were asked “have you ever wanted to kill someone”, what does the proposed method of killing say?

Answer 16

• Supports social learning theory

- As participants know how to use the weapons in an aggressive way because they have learnt from TV, books, media etc.

Question 17

What is the implications of social learning theory on media? What’s an alternative?

Answer 17

• Aggressive behavior could be a product of exposure in films/tv???
• Mechanism by which this might work is that it could lead to desensitization, it could prime aggressive schemas lead to informative/ normative conformity.
• Alternatively it could simply be interacting with a predisposition for violence: i.e. its not the violent TV causing violence but its violence that’s causing the viewing of violent TV

Question 18

What is the frustration- aggression hypothesis (Dollard, 1939)?

Answer 18

The revised frustration-aggression hypothesis (Berkowitz, 1969)

• frustration (and other negative states) create a predisposition to act
  aggressively
• aggressive cues determines whether predisposition will turn to action

Question 19

What did Berkowitz & LePage, 1967 show to do with the frustration- aggression hypothesis?

Answer 19

When a gun happened to be in the room the cue made people who were insulted more likely to behave aggressively.