F - Aggression (Hurting Others)

Cyberbullying

Bullying, harassing, or threatening someone using electronic communication such as texting, online social networks, or email; defined as intentional and repeated aggression via email, texts, social networking sites, and other electronic media.

Aggression

Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone.

Social Aggression

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

Hostile Aggression

Aggression that springs from anger; its goal is to injure.

Instrumental Aggression

Aggression that aims to injure, but only as a means to some other end.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

blames society, not human nature, for social evils.

Thomas Hobbes (English Philosopher)

credits society for restraining the human brute.

Sigmund Freud and Konrad Lorenz

In the 20th century, the “brutish” view, that agressive drive is inborn and thus inevitable, was argued by ___ the founder of psychoanalysis, in Vienna, and ___ an animal behavior expert.

Instinctive Behavior

The idea that aggression is an instinct collapsed as the list of supposed human instincts grew to include nearly every conceivable human behavior.

True

T or F: Aggression often occurs when males are competing with other males.

Evolutionary Psychology

Men may also become aggressive when their social status is challenged. “Violence committed against the right people at the right time was a ticket to social success.”

Heredity

This influences the neural system’s sensitivity to aggressive cues.

Genetic Influences Examples

• A 3-year-old who exhibits little conscientiousness and self-control is more vulnerable to substance abuse and arrest by age 32.

• A child who is nonaggressive at age 8 will very likely still be a nonaggressive person at age 48.

• Identical twins, when asked separately, are more likely than fraternal twins agree on whether they have “a violent temper” or have gotten into fights.

• Convicted criminals who are twins, fully half of their identical twins (but only one in five fraternal twins), also have criminal records.

Biochemical Influences

1. Alcohol

2. Testosterone

3. Poor Diet

4. Biology Behavior Interact

Alcohol

Both laboratory experiments and police data indicate that this 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.

True

T or F: Testosterone levels are higher among prisoners convicted of planned and unprovoked violent crimes compared with those convicted of nonviolent crimes.

True

T or F: College students reporting higher levels of anger after being ostracized had higher levels of testosterone in their saliva.

False —- aggressive

After handling a gun, men’s testosterone levels rise, and the more their testosterone increases, the more nonaggressive they are toward others.

Poor Diet

Researchers surveyed Boston Public High school; students about this and their aggressive or violent actions. Study found that men and women who consumed more trans fat — hydrogenated oils —- were more aggressive, even after adjusting for third factors.

Biology Behavior Interact

The traffic between biology and behavior flows both ways.
Ex. Higher levels of testosterone may cause dominant and aggressive behavior, but dominant and aggressive behavior can also lead to higher testosterone levels.

Background of Frustration-Aggression Theory

One of the first psychological theories of aggression. Frustration is anything that blocks us from attaining a goal. Frustration grows when our motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expect gratification, and when the blocking is complete. The aggressive energy need not explode directly against its source. Most people learn to inhibit direct retaliation, especially when others might disapprove or punish; instead, we displace or redirect our hostilities to safer targets.

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 a target other than the source of the frustration. Generally, the new target is a safer or more socially acceptable target.

Relative Deprivation

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

The rewards of aggression

Experience and by observing others, we learn that aggression often pays. Experiments have transformed animals from docile creatures into ferocious fighters.

Observational Learning

1. Social Learning

2. The Family

3. The Culture

Social Learning

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

The Family

Physically aggressive children tend to have had physically punitive parents, who disciplined them by modeling aggression with screaming, slapping, and beating.

The Culture

The broader _____ also matters. Men from cultures that are nondemocratic, high in income inequality, focused on teaching men to be warriors, and have gone to war are more likely to behave aggressively than those from cultures with the opposite characteristics.

Aversive Incidents

1. Pain

2. Heat

3. Attacks

Heat

Temporary climate variations can affect behavior. Offensive odors, cigarette smoke, and air pollution have all been linked with aggressive behavior.

Attacks

Being ___ or insulted is especially conducive to aggression.

Arousal

An aversive situation can trigger aggression by provoking hostile cognitions, hostile feelings, and arousal. These reactions make us more likely to perceive harmful intent and to react aggressively.

Weapons used to commit Murder in US in 2013

1. Firearms - 69%

2. Knives - 12%

3. Other Weapons - 12%

4. Hands, Feet - 6%

Distorted Perceptions or Sexual Reality

Neil Malamuth and James Check showed University of Manitoba men either two nonsexual movies or two movies depicting a man sexually overcoming a woman. A week later, when surveyed by a different experimenter, those who saw the films with mild sexual violence were more accepting of violence against women. This was especially true if they were aroused by the films.

Correlating Media Viewing and Behavior

Researchers are not saying that everyone who watches violent media becomes aggressive in real life — instead, they find it to be one of several risk factors for aggressive behavior, combined with family troubles, gender, and being the victim of someone else’s aggression.

Why does media viewing affects behavior?

1. Arousal it produces

2. Arousal energizes other behaviors

3. The media also evokes imitation

Badura Experiment

The adult’s punching of the Bobo doll seemed to make outbursts legitimate and to lower the children’s inhibitions. Viewing violence primes the viewer for aggressive behavior by activating violence-related thoughts.

Prosocial Behavior

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

Desensitization

a process that reduces physical or emotional reactivity to a stimulus through repeated, gradual exposure.

Social Scripts

When we find ourselves in new situations, uncertain how to act, we rely on social scripts — culturally provided mental instructions for how to act.

Altered Perceptions

a significant, often distorted change in how an individual experiences, interprets, or processes reality through their senses and cognition.

Gentile and Anderson

They offer reasons why violent game playing might have a more toxic effect than watching violent television. With game playing, players:

• identify with, and play the role of, a violent character;

• actively rehearse violence, instead of passively watching it

• engage in the whole sequence of enacting violence - selecting victims, acquiring weapons and ammunition, stalking the victim, aiming the weapon, pulling the trigger.

• are engaged with continual violence and threats of attack;

• repeat violent behaviors over and over

• are rewarded for violent acts.

Playing violent video games has an array of effects, including the following:

1. increases in aggressive behaviors

2. increases in aggressive thoughts

3. increases in aggressive feelings, including hostility, anger, or revenge

4. habituation in the brain

5. greater likelihood of carrying a weapon

6. decreases in self-control and increases in antisocial behavior

7. decreases in helping others, and in empathy for others.

Catharsis — Emotional Release

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

True

T or F: Video games are not all bad — not all of them are violent, and even the violent games improve hand-eye coordination, reaction time, spatial ability, and selective attention.

False — helps satisfy

Game playing is focused fun that not help satisfy basic needs for a sense of competence, control, and social connection.

Douglas Gentile and Craig Anderson

These individuals conclude, “Video games are excellent teachers.” Educational games teach children reading and math, prosocial games teach prosocial behavior, and violent games teach violence, they note. We do what we’re taught to do, whether that’s to help or to hurt.

Increased aggression is predicted by the following:

• Being male

• Aggressive or anger-prone personalities

• Alcohol use

• Violence viewing

• Anonymity

• Provocation

• The presence of weapon

• Group interaction

A Social Learning Approach

Children become less aggressive when caregivers ignore their aggressive behavior and reinforce their nonaggressive behavior.

True

T or F: Bullying, including cyberbullying, is reduced when parents or teachers monitor children closely and when children are educated about what behaviors are considered bullying.

True

T or F: Other programs focus on teaching empathy and encourage children not to ignore bullying.

Psychologist Steven Pinker

As per his documents, all forms of violence - including wars, genocide, and murders - are less common in recent years than in past eras.