Chapter 9: Aggression

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Chapter 9 Aggression

• What is Aggression?
• a. Types of Aggression
• Aggression as a Social Judgment
• Developmental Trends in Aggression
• Sex Differences
• Family Influences
• Controlling Aggression

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1. What is aggression?

• Two basic definitions
• Behavioral action that delivers noxious stimulus
  to another organism
• Intentional action intended to harm or injured
  another who is motivated to avoid

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1. What is aggression?

• Types of aggression
• Hostile actions for which the major goal is to
  harm or injure a victim
• Instrumental major goal is to gain access to
  objects, space, or privileges
• Relational acts aimed at damaging self-esteem,
  friendship, or social status

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2. Aggression as a social judgment

• Reasons behind acts are often considered in our
  judgments of aggression
• As are gender, age, whether someone was hurt
• And our own beliefs affect this as well

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Example

• Condry and Ross (1985)
• Showed videotapes of rough-and-tumble play in
  snow (snowsuits)
• Participants told both boys, both girls, one boy
  and one girl
• Asked to rate amount of aggression and extent to
  which behavior was just active, playful, and
  affectionate

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Ratings of aggressiveness of target childs
behavior as a function of gender
Aggression ratings
Sex of recipient
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Ratings of affection of target childs behavior
as a function of gender
Affection ratings
Sex of recipient
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3. Developmental trends

• Early conflicts (age 2)
• Incompatible needs, desires, or goals
• Preschool aggression
• Form changes over time
• 2 to 3 year olds more likely to kick or hit
• Older preschoolers tease, taunt, call names
• Increasing percentage of hostile acts
• Overall, aggression declines over the preschool
  period. It is fairly high early on and then
  declines.

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3. Developmental trends

• Elementary school
• Hostile aggression increases slightly, esp. in
  boys
• Children are capable of knowing whether acts were
  intentional or not
• But aggressive children are more likely to see
  unintentional acts as intentional

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3. Developmental trends

• Adolescence
• Aggression decreases overall
• BUT, the most violent adolescents increase their
  physical aggression

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3. Developmental trends

• Stability of aggression
• Mean number of criminal convictions by age 30

Age-8 aggression group
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4. Sex differences

• Biological viewpoint
• Males more aggressive than females in almost
  every society studied.
• --On overt aggression

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How girls are more aggressive than boys

• Relational aggression in girls
• Withdraw acceptance
• Exclude girl from social network, snub
• Spread rumors
• Goal is often to damage status, self-esteem,
  friendships
• Boys Hit or insult

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4. Sex differences

• Biological viewpoint
• Males more aggressive than females in almost
  every society studied.
• --On overt aggression
• Differences emerge early (by 24-36 mos.)
• Males are more aggressive in our closest primate
  relatives
• Testosterone linked to aggression

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4. Sex differences

• Social learning viewpoint
• Critical of biological theory
• Some studies show that girls are more aggressive
• E.g., more aggressive disputes among 1-year-olds
  when groups dominated by girls (Caplan et al.
  1991)

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Social learning

• Parents play rougher with boys
• React more negatively to aggression from girls
• Toys given to boys may promote aggression
• During preschool, children build a gender schema
  that includes aggression as a trait in of males
• Middle childhood boys expect aggressive acts to
  provide them with more tangible benefits

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5. Dodges Social Information Processing theory

• Children take information processing steps
• Encode social cues
• Interpret social cues
• Formulate social goals
• Generate problem solving strategies
• Evaluate the likely effectiveness of strategies
  and select a response
• Enact a response

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5. Dodges Social Information Processing theory

• Children take information processing steps
• After all the steps are taken, the peer evaluates
  the response and may then respond.
• The childs info-proc. is based on his/her mental
  state
• Past social experiences
• Social expectancies
• Knowledge of social rules
• Emotionality/emotional regulation skills

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5. Dodges Social Information Processing theory

• Children who are reactive aggressors are likely
  to believe that others are hostile to them.
• Hostile attributional bias
• Found equally in girls and boys
• () This theory is useful because it goes beyond
  cognitive interpretations of the situation into
  childrens mental states and biases.
• (-) Does not explain why children are aggressive
  or non-aggressive children, or how aggressive
  children developed biases in the first place.

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6. Family influences

• Power-assertive discipline
• Adults relies on power administering spanking or
  withholding privileges
• Bad combination parents cold, rejecting, and
  erratic in discipline, and they allow children to
  express aggressive impulses. raise aggressive
  children
• Cold, rejecting parents model aloofness and a
  lack of concern for others.
• Child acts out, but adult often ignores.
• When adults finally spank the child, they are
  reinforcing the behavior they want to suppress.

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6. Family influences

• Parental conflict
• Children become distressed
• Also, children may see that aggression is a tool
  to getting what they want
• Children who witness conflict (but are not
  victims) are more likely to become proactive
  aggressors.
• Children who are also victims are likely to
  distrust others and be reactively aggressive.

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6. Family influences

• Coercive home environments (Patterson)
• Family members bicker, not a lot of intimacy
• More threat, needling, irritation
• Negative reinforcement
• When stim. is removed as consequence of the act,
  increases probability of recurrence of act.
• E.g., one family member makes another scream,
  whine, tease, or hit, forcing antagonist to stop.

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6. Family influences

• Negative reinforcement
• 1. Girl teases brother, who yells at her to
  stop. (- reinf. yelling)
• 2. Girls calls brother nasty name, and brother
  chases her and hits her.
• 3. Girls stops calling him names (- reinf.
  hitting), whimpers and hits him back, and he
  withdraws. Boy then hits sister again,
  escalating conflict.
• 4. Mother intervenes but may apply punitive and
  coercive tactics to make them stop fighting.
• 5. Kids stop fighting (reinforces mom for using
  coercive tactics), but then whine or yell at mom.
  If mom backs off, she is reinforcing the
  countercoercive techniques.
• Related to chronic delinquency

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7. Controlling aggression

• Better to reward prosocial behaviors
• Catharsis hypothesis
• Blowing off steam doesnt work
• Kids become no less aggressive afterwards
• Create a nonaggressive environment
• Eliminate payoffs
• Empathy training