SOCPSYC Chapter 10

Aggression

• physical or verbal behavior intended to cause harm

  • Excludes unintentional harm, such as auto accident or sidewalk collisions

  • Also excludes actions that may involve pain as an unavoidable side effect of helping someone (e.g. dental treatment or assisted suicide)

  • Includes kicks and slaps, threats and insults, or even gossip or snide “digs”

Physical Aggression

hurting someone’s body

Social Aggression

• Hurting someone’s feelings or threatening their relationships. Sometimes called relational aggression, it includes cyberbullying and some forms of in-person bullying.

  • Can have serious consequences, with victims suffering from depression and sometimes suicide

Hostile aggression

• springs from anger and aims to injure

  • Ex. one teen is angry at another for stealer her boyfriend

Instrumental aggression

• - aims to injure, too–but is committed in pursuit of another goal 

  • Ex. a high school student believes she can become popular by by rejecting an unpopular girl

  • Most terrorism is like this

Instinctive behavior

An innate, unlearned behavior pattern exhibited by all members of a species.

Alcohol

Both laboratory experiments and police data indicate that ____ unleashes aggression when people are provoked

Testosterone

Hormonal influences appear to be much stronger in other animals than in humans. But human aggressiveness does correlate with the male sex hormone testosterone.

frustration-aggression theory

the theory that frustration triggers a readiness to aggress

Frustration

the blocking of goal-directed behavior

Displacement

The redirection of aggression to target other than the source of the frustration. Generally, the new target is safer or more socially acceptable target

Relative deprivation

The perception that one is less well off than others with whom one compares oneself

Social learning theory

The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded and punished.

Aversive Incidents

Recipes for aggression often include some type of aversive experience. These include pain, uncomfortable heat, an attack, or overcrowding.

Pornography and Sexual Violence

Social psychologists report that viewing such fictional scenes of a man overpowering and arousing a woman can (a) distort men’s (and possibly women’s) perceptions of how women actually respond to sexual coercion and (b) increase men’s aggression against women.

Television and the Internet

Studies of television viewing and aggression aim to identify effects more subtle and pervasive than the occasional “copycat” murders that capture public attention. They ask: How does television affect viewers’ behavior and viewers’ thinking?

Prosocial behavior

Positive, constructive, helpful social behavior; the opposite of antisocial behavior

Social scripts

Culturally provided mental instructions for how to act in various situations

Cognitive Priming

Research also reveals that watching violent television primes aggression-related ideas (Bushman, 1998). After viewing violence, people offer more hostile explanations for others’ behavior

Catharsis

Emotional release. The ______ view of aggression is that the aggressive drive is reduced when one “releases” aggressive energy, either by acting aggressively or by fantasizing aggression.