What Is Aggression?

• Aggression: Behavior that is intended to harm another individual

  • Proactive Aggression: Aggression in which harm is inflicted as a means to a desired end

    • Harming someone for personal gain

    • Harming someone for attention

    • Harming someone for self-defense

    • Also called instrumental aggression

  • Reactive Aggression: Harm that is inflicted for its own sake

    • Also called emotional aggression

    • Often impulsive and carried out in the heat of the moment

    • Can also be calm and calculating

• ex: words, deeds, rumors, failure to act

• Violence: Extreme acts of aggression

• Anger: Strong feelings of displeasure in response to a perceived injury

• Hostility: A negative, antagonistic attitude toward another person or group

Culture, Gender, and Individual Differences

Culture and Aggression

Comparisons Across Societies

• The US has one of the highest murder rates among politically stable, industrialized nations

• Murder rates tend to be much higher in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Southern and Middle Africa

• Countries with wide disparities in income have murder rates almost 4x greater than societies with more equal income distribution

• Individualistic cultures are most likely to have a relatively high rate of aggression

• School shootings are high in the US

• The US has a tremendous amount of gun-related violence

• Compared to the UK and Canada

  • The rate of violent crime is lower in the US

  • The murder rate is higher in the US

• Cultural differences in what is considered a crime

  • Domestic violence seen as acceptable in India and Nepal

  • Groping underage girls acceptable in Japan

  • GenItal mutilation acceptable in parts of Africa and Asia

Bullying Around the World

• Intentional harm, physically or psychologically

• Repetition: The victim is targeted a number of times

• Power Imbalance: The bully abuses their power over the victim

• Cyberbullying: Bullying through electronic devices and social media

• Victim’s suffering

  • Feelings of panic, nervousness, and distraction in school

  • Recurring memories of abuse

  • Depression and anxiety

  • Suicide

Nonviolent Cultures

• The Chewong don’t have a words in their language for acts of aggression

• Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites

• These cultures cherish peacefulness, and some even have religious or mythological reasons for remaining peaceful

Subcultures Within a Country

• Teens and young adults have a much greater rate of involvement in violent crime

• The large majority of murders happen within the murderer’s race

• Having an ethnic minority background can be tied to higher instances of aggression in other parts of the world

• Murder rate is consistently highest in the South of the US

  • Culture of honor is prevalent among white males in this region

  • Could also be due to the hot weather

Gender and Aggression

• Men are more violent than women

• Men commit the large majority of homicides

• Men constitute the large majority of murder victims

• school shooters are male

• The vast majority of people killed by an intimate partner are women

• Males are consistently more aggressive than females

• Females are as likely to feel anger as males, but they’re less likely to act on their anger in aggressive ways

• Boys tend to be more overtly aggressive than girls

• Girls tend to be equally as / more aggressive than boys when it comes to indirect and relational aggression

  • Indirect Aggression: Acts like telling lies to get someone in trouble or shutting a person out of desired activities

  • Relational Aggression: A kind of indirect aggression that targets a person’s relationships and social status

    • Threatening to end a friendship

    • Gossipping

    • Trying to get others to dislike the target

  • Why?

    • Females typically care more about relationships and intimacy

      • May see injuring someone socially as particularly effective

    • Strong norms encourage boys to aggress physically and discourage girls from doing so

• Gay men reported significantly lower levels of physical aggression than straight men

• No difference with indirect aggression

• There is no reliable gender difference in the percentage of women and men who physically assault their intimate partners

  • Women are at least as likely to aggress against their intimate partners as men are

  • Men are far less likely to report that their partners physically assaulted them

  • Consequences of aggression and violence are far from equal

    • Women are often killed, seriously injured, or sexually assaulted during domestic disputes

• Sexual Assault

  • Men are more likely to be perpetrators

  • Females are more likely to be targets

Individual Differences

• Aggression in childhood predicts aggression in adolescence and adulthood

• Big Five factors: Five dimensions that account for a great deal of variability in people’s personalities across gender and culture

  • Being low in agreeableness is a particularly strong predictor of aggression

  • Being low in openness and high in neuroticism are also associated with aggression

• Some traits associated with aggression only predict aggression reliably under conditions of provocation

  • Conditions of Provocation: Situations in which the individual feels threatened, insulted, or stressed

  • Emotional Susceptibility: The tendency to feel distressed, inadequate, and vulnerable to perceived threats

  • Type A Personality: The tendency to be driven by feelings of inadequacy to try to prove oneself through personal accomplishments

  • Impulsivity: Being relatively unable to control one’s thoughts and behaviors

• Relationship between self-esteem and aggression

  • Evidence is mixed

  • Can be different across cultures

• Narcissism: Having an inflated sense of self-worth and self-love, having low empathy for others, tending to focus on the self rather than others, and being especially sensitive to perceived insults

  • Consistently and positively correlated with aggression in response to provocation, especially public provocation

• Dark Triad: A set of three traits that are associated with higher levels of aggressiveness: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism

  • Machiavellianism: Characterized by manipulativeness

  • Psychopathy: Characterized by impulsivity, poor self-control, and a lack of empathy

• Self-control

  • Children low in self-control tend to be more aggressive as young adults

  • Poor self-control is one of the strongest predictors of crime, cyberbullying, and aggression toward strangers and romantic partners

Origins of Aggression

• Both nature and nurture play their respective roles

Evolutionary Psychology

• Our ancestors increased their chances of attracting mates and achieving status in a group when they engaged in fighting and warfare

• Evolution favored the inhibition in aggression against those who’re genetically related to us

• Males are competitive with each other because females select high-status males for mating and aggression is a way males were able to achieve and maintain status

• Male-to-male violence is most likely to occur when one male is perceived as challenging the other’s status or social power

• Male-to-female violence is predominantly triggered by sexual jealousy

• Evolution favored women who could protect their children

• Relational aggression can harm the reputations of rival females, which can make men less interested in them

Genes, Hormones, and the Brain

Genes

• Heritability explains between a third and a half of the variation in aggression in children

• MAOA gene has been linked to aggressive behavior

The Role of Testosterone

• Strong link between testosterone levels and aggression

• Association between testosterone and human aggression is weaker and less reliable than expected

• Combination of high testosterone and low cortisol is what predicts aggression

• When cortisol levels are high, the effects of testosterone on aggression are more likely to be blocked or inhibited

The Role of Serotonin

• Low levels of serotonin in the nervous systems of humans and many animals are associated with high levels of aggression

• Drugs that boost serotonin’s activity can dampen aggressiveness

Brain and Executive Functioning

• Evidence linking abnormalities in frontal lobe structures with tendencies toward aggressive and violent behavior

• Impaired prefrontal processing can disrupt executive functioning

  • Executive Functioning: The cognitive abilities and processes that allow humans to plan or inhibit their actions

• Link between poor executive functioning and high aggression

• Aggression and brain activity

  • Very aggressive teens don’t show empathy in response to witnessing pain

  • Exhibit a pattern of brain activity associated with experiencing rewards

  • Less activation in areas associated with self-regulation and moral reasoning

• Concussions

  • Damage to the uncinate fasciculus was associated with more aggression and impulsivity and compromised executive functioning

  • Uncinate Fasciculus: The part of the brain that connects the orbitofrontal cortex with the anterior temporal lobe

How Is Aggression Learned?

• Positive Reinforcement: When aggression produces desired outcomes

• Negative Reinforcement: When aggression prevents or stops undesirable outcomes

• Children who see aggression producing more good outcomes and fewer bad outcomes are more aggressive than other children

• Punishment is most likely to decrease aggression when it

  • Immediately follows the aggressive behavior

  • Is strong enough to deter the aggressor

  • Is consistently applies and perceived as fair and legitimate by the aggressor

  • (When these conditions aren’t met, punishment can backfire)

• The certainty of punishment is more important than its severity

Corporal Punishment

• Physical force intended to cause a child pain, but not injury, for the purpose of controlling or correcting the child’s behavior

• Less prevalent than it used to be

• Majority of children in the US today experience spanking and other forms of corporal punishment

• Remains common around the world

• Spanking may result in immediate obedience but doesn’t work in the long run

• More corporal punishment now is associated with more aggression later

• Teaches the child that physical force is an effective and appropriate way to deal with problems

• Less likely to increase aggressiveness when it’s administered in the context of an overall warm and supportive parent-child relationship

• Association between corporal punishment and later aggressiveness was weaker in African American families

Social Learning Theory

• The theory that behavior is learned through the observation of others as well as through the direct experience of rewards and punishments

• Models affect antisocial, aggressive behavior

• Bandura’s Bobo Dolls

• A wide range of aggressive models can elicit a wide range of aggressive imitations

• Models don’t have to be present (ex: TV)

• Children can learn aggression by seeing it modeled by cartoon characters

• People can also learn aggressive scripts that serve as guides for how to behave and solve social problems

  • Can be activated automatically in various situations

  • Can learn from their parents

    • Watching their parents fight

    • Parents using physical force to discipline their children

• Cycle of Violence: Children who witness parental violence or who are themselves abused are more likely as adults to inflict abuse on intimate partners or their children or be victims of intimate violence

• Nonaggressive models can decrease aggressive behavior

• Males and females are taught different lessons about aggression

  • Boys are more likely than girls to be taught that physical aggression is an appropriate and rewarding way to handle conflict or manipulate other people

  • Relational aggression may be rewarded for girls

  • Overt aggression was associated with more popularity for boys and less popularity for girls

  • Relational aggression was more strongly associated with popularity for girls than boys

Culture and Honor

• Socialization of aggression varies from culture to culture

• Adolescent boys in traditional villages in Italy are encouraged to aggress as an indication of their sexual prowess and in preparation for their dominant role in the household

• Machismo: Challenges, abuse, and even differences of opinion must be met with fists or other weapons

• Culture of Honor: A culture that emphasizes honor and social status, particularly for males, and the role of aggression in protecting that honor

• Cultures of honor are associated with school violence

• Suicide rates are higher in culture-of-honor states

Situational Influences on Aggression

The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

• Frustration, which is produced by interrupting a person’s progress toward an expected goal, will always elicit the motive to aggress

• All aggression is caused by frustration

• Displacement: Aggressing against a substitute target because aggressive acts against the source of the frustration are inhibited by fear or lack of access

• Catharsis: Displacing aggression in these ways can be effective at reducing the drive to aggress further

The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Does the Evidence Support It?

• Frustration doesn’t always produce aggressive inclinations

• Not all aggression is caused by frustration

• Catharsis is a two-step sequence

  • Aggression reduces the level of physiological arousal

  • Because arousal is reduced, people are less angry and less likely to aggress further

• The catharsis idea is a myth

• Frustration can simply dissipate over time

• In the long run, successful aggression sets the stage for more aggression later

Negative Affect

• Negative feelings can trigger aggression

Heat and Aggression: Losing Your Cool

• People lose their cool in hot temperatures and behave more aggressively

• More violent crimes occur in the summer, in hot years, and in hot cities

• Reports of violence peak in the summer months

• Global warming will make this a huge issue

• Culture of honor also an important factor

  • May interact with the heat

  • The relatively high temps of the region may support aggressive norms

Provocation and Social Rejection

• Provocation causes negative affect, which plays an important role in triggering aggression

• Insults and rejections increases the likelihood of aggressive responses

• Social rejection is the most significant risk factor for adolescent violence

Culture and Negative Affect

• American participants are relatively more likely to experience anger than japanese participants

• Japanese participants are relatively more likely to experience shame than american participants

• For people in collectivist cultures, anger in reaction to frustration might violate cultural values of social harmony

• Japanese individuals of relatively low status expressed anger less often than those of higher status

Arousal

• Noise, violent movies, and arousing music have been shown to increase aggression

• Heat increases arousal

• Excitation Transfer: The arousal created by one stimulus can intensify an individual’s emotional response to another stimulus

  • People are likely to misattribute arousal caused by heat to something else

  • Leads to aggression

Thought: Automatic and Deliberate

Aggressive Cues

• The presence of a weapon can act as a situational cue that automatically triggers aggressive thoughts and feelings

  • Increases the likelihood of aggression

  • Berkowitz and LePage

  • Weapons Effect: The tendency for the presence of guns to increase aggression

• Individuals may differ in what associations they have with various weapons

  • Hunters were less likely to associate hunting guns with aggression bc they linked them with sport and fun

  • Hunters had more negative, aggressive associations with assault guns than nonhunters

• Weapons increase men’s testosterone levels

• Any object or external characteristic that’s associated with successful aggression, pain, or unpleasantness, can serve as an aggression-enhancing situational cue

Higher-Order Cognition

• An angry person might refrain from acting aggressively if they realize that the potential costs of fighting seems too high

• Hostile Attribution Bias: People tend to perceive hostile intent in others

  • Associated with both physical and relational aggression

• Violent prisoners were much more likely to interpret the ambiguous faces as angry

• Violent men perceive more hostility in others, which is likely to trigger more aggressive responses in turn

The Struggle for Self-Control: Rumination, Alcohol, and Other Factors

• Ability to practice self-control is vital to the inhibition of aggression

• Behind a majority of aggressive and violent acts lies the failure of self-control

• Rumination: Repeatedly thinking about and reliving an anger-inducing event, focusing on angry thoughts and feelings, and even planning or imagining revenge

• Rumination contributes to direct and displaced aggression

• Rumination impairs people’s ability to inhibit aggression

• High arousal impairs the cognitive control of aggression

  • When you’re very emotional and angry, it’s hard to focus on anything else

• Alcohol as an obstacle to self-control

  • Alcohol consumption often increases aggressive behavior

  • Reduces inhibitions ➝ facilitates aggressive behaviors

  • Impairs people’s executive functioning

  • Alcohol Myopia: Alcohol narrows people’s focus of intention

    • May focus on a perceived provocation

    • Fail to think about info that’d explain away this provocation

    • Makes aggression much more likely to occur unless the drunk person’s focus can be distracted

• Non-alcoholic sugar-rich drinks can boost people’s executive functioning and self-control

• Being hangry leads to heightened arousal bc the low glucose leaves our brain with less of the energy required for self-control

• Caffeine significantly increases arousal, which can increases aggression

Situational Influences: Putting It All Together

General Aggression Model

• Various aversive experiences, situational cues, and individual differences can create negative affect, high arousal, and aggressive thoughts, which can lead to aggressive behavior

• Depends on the outcome of higher-order thinking

  • Can inhibit aggression

  • Can facilitate aggression

L-cubed theory

• Emphasizes the role of self-control in aggression

• Instigation: Social factors that often trigger aggressive impulses, such as provocation or social rejection

• Impellance: Personality and situational factors that promote the urge to aggress when encountering instigating factors

  • Angry rumination

  • Trait aggressiveness

• Inhibition: The various factors of self-control

Media Effects

Violence in Popular Media: Does Life Imitate Art?

The Research Findings

• Media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts

• Significant link between violent media and actual aggressive thoughts and behaviors

• Playing violent video games was associated with

  • Increased aggressive behavior, cognition, and affect

  • Decreased prosocial behavior and affect

  • Playing prosocial games has the opposite effect

• Indirect or relational aggression in children’s TV

  • Indirect aggressors tended to be rewarded for their aggression

  • More likely to be female and attractive

  • Exposure had immediate effects on adolescents’ behavior

• Not everyone exposed to media violence will become more aggressive

• Not all acts of aggression are fueled by media violence

• Frequent exposure to media violence should be seen as an important risk factor for real-world aggression

How Does Media Violence Cause These Effects?

• Desensitization: Reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence

  • Form of habituation

  • Reduces physiological arousal and corresponding brain activity to new incidents of violence

  • Makes us become more accepting of violence

• Influences people’s values and attitudes toward aggression, making it seem more legitimate

  • Fuels the aggressive scripts that we develop, which we then use to guide our behavior

• Cultivation: The process by which the mass media constructs a version of social reality for the public

  • People perceive it as true even when it isn’t

  • The media tends to depict the world as much more violent than it actually is

  • Makes people more fearful, distrustful, and likely to arm themselves

  • More likely to behave aggressively in what they perceive as a threatening situation

Pornography: explicit sexual material

Nonviolent and Violent Pornography

• Little support for a direct causal link between the use of nonviolent porn and sexual aggression

• Evidence for an association between porn use and attitudes supporting violence against women

• Violent porn brings together high arousal, negative emotional reactions, and aggressive thoughts

• Porn sites focus specifically on images of sexual violence against women and use depictions of women’s pain as a selling point

• Effects of violent porn are gender-specific

  • Male-to-male aggression is no greater after exposure to violent porn

  • Male-to-female aggression is markedly increased after exposure to violent porn

Individual Differences

• Not everyone is affected by pornography in the same way

• Risk Factors:

  • Men who have relatively high levels of sexual arousal in response to violent porn

  • Men who express attitudes and opinions indicating acceptance of violence toward women

  • Men who regularly use pornography and whose parents frequently used harsh corporal punishment

• Confluence Model of Sexual Aggression: For the subset of individuals who already score high on multiple known risk factors of sexual aggression, consuming pornography increases the risk of sexually aggressive attitudes and behaviors

  • The presence of multiple risk factors at once is especially dangerous

  • Porn becomes a greater risk factor for aggression

Objectification and Dehumanization

• Men who automatically associated women with animals or objects showed stronger inclination to sexually harass or rape women

• Prejudice and aggression toward outgroups are more likely to result when people perceive outgroup members like objects

• Dehumanization is a common by-product of conflict and war between groups

  • Fighting between groups fosters a biased perspective of the other group

  • Makes engaging in violence more tolerable and seemingly necessary

  • Makes finding peace more difficult

  • Lowers the restraints against stepping over the ethical line into abuse and torture

• Cure for dehumanization is to restore the human connection

Reducing Aggression and Violence

• Norms have changed dramatically to discourage aggression

Thoughts, Feelings, and Self-Control

• Enhanced education, intelligence, reasoning, and empathy

• Aggression Replacement Training:

  • Social competence training

  • Improved moral reasoning

  • Aggression control

• Most promising interventions for reducing reactive aggression

  • Improve self-control

    • Two-week self-control training task

  • Emphasize cognitive reappraisal

    • Train individuals to interpret provocations in more neutral, less emotional terms

    • Think about the events from an objective, non-personal perspective

  • Cognitive control

    • Training the regulation of emotion in response to emotionally relevant stimuli

    • Related to self-control

  • Mindfulness

    • Getting people to be in a nonjudgmental, nonreactive state in which they more easily just accept their physical and mental experiences

• Behavioral Modification: Treatments that try to alter an individual’s behavior through learning principles that reinforce nonaggressive actions

Sociocultural Approaches

• Improved economy, healthier living conditions, and social support would reduce the factors that fuel aggression

• Reducing the prevalence of guns in society would have a number of calming effects

• Teach and model nonviolent responses to frustrations and social problems

• Fostering cooperation and shared goals across groups

• Select shows and games for children that provide compelling, vivid prosocial models

Multiple-Level Approaches: Programs to Prevent Violence and Bullying

Multisystemic Therapy

• Addresses individuals’ problems at several different levels

• Individualized treatment

• Works with patient’s family and environment

• Takes a lot of time and resources

• Significantly reduces the rates of violent crimes

Bullying Prevention

• Comprehensive programs that operate on multiple levels

• Most successful bullying prevention programs are the more intensive and long-lasting ones

• Empathy-training programs

• Specifically target bystanders