PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS IN AGGRESSION

1
PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS IN AGGRESSION

• The nature and nurture of aggression

2
Aggression Defined

• Intentional behavior aimed at causing either
  physical or psychological harm
• Contrast aggression and assertiveness
• Hostile vs. Instrumental Aggression
• Hostile stems from a feeling of anger. Goal is
  to inflict pain or injury.
• Instrumental aggression takes place as a means
  to some other goal (e.g., professional assassin)

3
Is Aggression an Instinct?

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  (1712-1778) blames society, not human nature, for
  social evils.

4
Is Aggression an Instinct?

• Thomas Hobbes

• English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
  sees societys laws as necessary to restrain and
  control the human brute.

5
Is Aggression an Instinct?

• Inborn

• Instinctual

• In the last century, brutish viewthat
  aggressive drive is inborn and thus
  inevitablewas argued by Sigmund Freud and Konrad
  Lorenz.

• Both agreed that that aggressive energy is
  instinctual (unlearned and universal)
• If not discharged, it builds up until it explodes

6
Is Aggression an Instinct?

• Sigmund Freud

• Freud speculated that human aggression springs
  from a self-destructive impulse
• It redirects toward others the energy of a
  primitive death urge (death instinct)

7
Is Aggression an Instinct?

• Konrad Lorenz

• An animal behavior expert, he saw aggression as
  adaptive rather than self-destructive

8
Influences of Aggression
9
Neural Influences

• Researchers have found neural systems in both
  animals and humans that facilitate aggression
• When scientists activate these areas in the
  brain, hostility increases when they deactivated
  them, hostility decreases.
• The prefrontal cortex acts like an emergency
  brake on deeper brain areas involved in
  aggressive behavior.

10
Neural Influences

• In one experiment, researchers placed an
  electrode in an aggression-inhibiting area of a
  domineering monkeys brain. One small monkey,
  given the button that activated the electrode,
  learned to push it everytime the tyrant monkey
  became intimidating.
• In human, after a woman receives electrical
  stimulation in her amygdala (a part of the brain
  core), the woman became enraged and smashed her
  guitar against the wall.

11
Genetic Influences

• Heredity influence the neural systems
  sensitivity to aggressive cues.
• Animals can be bred for aggressive purposes, as
  in cock fighting or dog fighting (Mike Vick/Pit
  bulls)
• Our temperaments are partly brought with us in
  the world, influenced by our sympathetic nervous
  system.

12
Utility of Aggression

• Method One Socially aggressive physical
  activities (e.g., football)
• Neither participating or watching these sports
  decreases aggressive behavior (in fact, watching
  temporarily increases aggression).

13
Utility of Aggression

• Method Two Fantasy
• Utility is limited it reduces some, but not a
  lot of aggression
• Method Three Direct Aggression. Does lashing
  out help to reduce future aggression
• Apparently not. Actually seems to increase
  future aggression
• Cognitive Dissonance. Blaming the victim.
• Only reduces future aggression if equity has been
  restored.

14
Blood Chemistry

• Levels of various substances in the blood can
  provide clues to a patient's condition and
  aggression
• When people are provoked, alcohol unleashes
  aggression
• Violent people are more likely to drink and to
  become aggressive when intoxicated
• Aggressiveness also correlates with the male sex
  hormone, testosterone
• Testosterone levels are high among prisoners
  convicted of unprovoked violent crimes than of
  non-violent crimes

15
Psychological Influences
16
Psychological Influences
Frustration always leads to some form of
aggression.
The classic frustration-aggression theory
(Dollard others. 1989 Miller, 1941)

• Frustration is anything (such as the
  malfunctioning vending machine) that blocks our
  attaining goal.
• It grows when our motivation to achieve a goal is
  very strong, when we expected gratification, and
  when the blocking is complete.

17
Psychological Influences
Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner)

• If after performing an aggressive act an animal
  or human receives a positive reinforcement (such
  as food or a toy), they are likely to repeat the
  behavior in order to gain more rewards.
• In this way, the aggressive act becomes
  positively associated with the reward, which
  encourages the further display of aggression.

18
Psychological Influences
Social Learning Theory/Observational Learning
(Albert Bandura)

• Aggression is initially learned from social
  behavior and it is maintained by other
  conditions 
• Aggressive responses can also be acquired through
  social modeling or social reference.
• Everyday life exposes us to aggressive models in
  the family.
• Social environment outside the home provides
  models.
• Bandura contended that aggressive acts are
  motivated by a variety of aversive
  experiencesfrustration, pain, insults.

19
Environmental Influences
20
(No Transcript)
21
Painful Accidents

• Pain heightens aggressiveness in individuals.
• Leonard Berkowitz and his associates demonstrated
  aggressiveness by having students hold one hand
  in lukewarm water or painfully cold water.
• Those whose hands were submerged in the cold
  water reported feeling more irritable and more
  annoyed, and they were more willing to blast
  another person with unpleasant noise
• Berkowitz concluded that aversive stimulation
  rather than frustration is the basic trigger of
  hostile aggression.

22
Painful Accidents

• But any aversive event, whether dashed
  expectation, a personal insult, or physical pain,
  can incite an emotional outburst
• Even the torment of a depressed state increases
  the likelihood of hostile aggressive behavior

23
Heat

• An uncomfortable environment heightens aggressive
  tendencies.
• Offensive odors, cigarette smoke, and air
  pollution have all been linked with aggressive
  behavior (But heat is the most-studied
  environmental irritant.
• William Griffit (1970) found that compared to
  students who answered questionnaires in a room
  with a normal temperature, those who did so in an
  uncomfortable hot room reported feeling more
  tired and aggressive, and experienced more
  hostility.
• Follow-up experiments revealed that heat also
  triggers retaliative actions

24
Attacks

• Being attacked or insulted by another is
  especially conducive to aggression.
• Experiments confirm that intentional attacks
  breed retaliatory attacks.

25
Crowding

• The subjective feeling of not having enough
  spaceis stressful
• Crammed in the back of the bus, trapped in a slow
  moving freeway traffic, or living three to a
  small room in a college dorm diminishes ones
  sense of control
• The stress experienced by animals allowed to
  overpopulate a confirmed environment that
  heighten aggressiveness

26
Effects of Overcrowding

Example 1Swimming Pool in China
27
Effects of Overcrowding

Example 2California Department of Corrections
28
Effects of Overcrowding

Example 3American Freeways
29
(No Transcript)
30
Color

• Research demonstrates that room color does not
  have much of an impact
• However, uniform color has been demonstrated to
  be related to an increase in penalties received
  (in both football and hockey)
• Does wearing a color make you more aggressive or
  are referees more likely to interpret ambiguous
  situations as aggressive?

31
(No Transcript)
32
Social Learning and Media

• Idea of learning from aggressive models
• TV is full of violent models
• High correlation between the amount of TV watched
  and viewers subsequent aggression this data is
  deemed to be correlational
• Psychological research has demonstrated that
  viewing TV violence can numb peoples reactions
  when they are faced with real-life aggression

33
(No Transcript)
34
Why Does Media Violence Affect Us?

• Ideas in psych research has four themes
• Seeing others being aggressive weakens our
  learned inhibitions against violence.
• Learn techniques imitate.
• Primes our anger, more aware of our anger
• Desensitization to violence.

35
Can We Reduce Violence?

• Inconclusive as many remedies ineffective.
• More Punishment for violent offenders?
• More effective when applied in the context of a
  warm relationship
• Overly restrictive punishments are frustrating,
  which can lead to even more aggression/violence
• What does that say about prison? Think about the
  Stanford Prison Study (Zimbardo).
• Moderate vs. severe punishment combined with
  cognitive dissonance.

36
Can We Reduce Violence?

• Punishment of aggressive models? (public
  floggings, death penalty, etc.)
• Death penalty does not decrease homicide rate in
  a country.
• In lab research seeing an aggressive model
  punished does not reduce future aggression
  (seeing them rewarded does increase aggression
  however.)
• Presence of non-aggressive models?
• Remember, we often conform to others when we seek
  out information on how to act

37
Soccer Not Life and Death Folks
38
Causes of Aggression

• Alcohol
• 75 of individuals arrested for crimes of
  violence were legally drunk at the time of their
  arrests.
• Experimental evidence implies that alcohol
  ingestion increases aggression
• Alcohol is a disinhibitor. Under the influence
  of alcohol a persons primary tendencies are
  revealed

39
Causes of Aggression

• Pain and Discomfort
• An animal experiences pain and cant flee,
  violence follows
• Research has been done on heat/temperature and
  the links to violent behavior.
• Violent crime and aggression increases as
  temperature increases (e.g., temperatures above
  90 and fighting)
• Conflict is increased during interaction as it
  gets warmer
• Lab research suggests that temperature is the key
  component

40
Causes of Aggression

• Frustration
• Thwarting an individuals attainment of a goal
  increases the probability of an aggressive
  response
• Frustration becomes greater the closer one gets
  to a goal, and if interruption is unexpected or
  illegitimate
• Key seems to be relative deprivation not just
  deprivation
• Revolutions are not begun by people with their
  faces in the mud, but people who have recently
  lifted their faces out of the mud and have had
  time to look around

41
Controlling/Eliminating Aggression

• Introduce incompatible responsesfor example
  certain emotional response such as empathy and
  humor are incompatible with aggression.
• Purposely making a joke or showing some sympathy
  for the other persons point of view can greatly
  reduce anger and frustration.

42
What Causes This Behavior?
43
WHY???
44
Causes of Aggression

• Neurological and Chemical Causes
• Amygdala (located in the forebrain).
• Testosterone leads to an increase in
  aggression, but also increases during aggression
• If testosterone is linked to aggression, does
  this mean that men are more aggressive than
  women?
• Across cultures, women demonstrate less violence
• During era of women's liberation, non-violent
  crime rate relative to male rate has increased,
  but not violent crime rate.

45
(No Transcript)
46
How to Reduce Aggression