aggression definitions

Cognitive Priming

The temporary increase in the accessibility of thoughts and ideas due to exposure to media violence.

De-Individuation

A social psychological explanation for aggression, suggesting individuals lose personal identity and inhibitions in anonymous groups.

Desensitisation

The process by which individuals become less shocked by media violence after repeated exposure, leading to increased acceptance of aggression.

Disinhibition

A theory explaining how media violence loosens normal restraints, making aggressive behavior seem more acceptable.

Dispositional Explanations

Individual characteristics that prisoners bring into the institution lead to aggression. The Importation Model suggests prisoners import social histories and personality traits influencing their behavior.

Ethological Explanation

The study of innate behavior in animals, including aggression, focusing on its adaptive value for survival and reproduction.

Evolutionary Explanations

The suggestion that aggression has an adaptive purpose in enhancing survival and reproductive potential.

Fixed Action Patterns

Behavioral sequences that occur automatically in response to specific stimuli, driven by innate releasing mechanisms.

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

The theory proposing that frustration leads to aggression as a cathartic release.

Genetic Factors: Aggression

The genetic explanation for aggression suggests that aggression is an inherited behaviour. Recent research has focused on a defect in the MAOA gene, which is linked to aggression.

Hormonal Mechanisms: Aggression

Hormones are chemical messengers secreted by cells or glands; testosterone is the main hormone that has been implicated in aggressive behaviour.

Importation Model

A dispositional explanation for institutional aggression suggesting that individuals bring their own social histories into institutions.

Innate Releasing Mechanisms

The ethological explanation proposes that aggression can be the result of an evolved automatic biological response in the brain. Animals have a built-in neural structure which, when exposed to specific stimuli (signs or releasers) such as facial expressions, will cause the release of an automatic behavioural response (a fixed action pattern).

Institutional Aggression

Institutions are places where there are strict rules that give little choice to members of that institution. Institutional aggression refers to aggressive behaviours adopted by members of an institution. Psychologists are interested in whether institutional aggression is caused by the personalities of the institution's members (dispositional factors), or by the situation in which the members find themselves (situational factors).

Limbic System

A brain structure involved in emotional responses, including reactive aggression.

MAOA Gene

A gene associated with the regulation of the MAOA enzyme, linked to levels of aggression, particularly in its low-activity form.

Neural Mechanisms

Structures such as neurons and neural circuits involved in regulating aggression.

Situational Explanations

Explanations for aggression that focus on factors within the social situation that foster aggressive behavior.

Social Learning Theory

A theory that states individuals become aggressive by imitating role models and that this behavior is reinforced vicariously.

Testosterone

An androgen linked to aggression, affecting neural transmission and control of aggressive responses.