Chap 9 Flashcards
What Is Aggression?
Aggression (defined as behaviour intended to cause harm) can be physical (hurting someone’s body) or social (hurting someone’s feelings or status).
social aggression vs hostile aggression?
Social aggression includes bullying and cyberbullying (bullying carried out online or through texting).
Aggression (either physical or social) can be hostile aggression, which springs from emotions such as anger, or instrumental aggression, which aims to injure as a means to some other end.
What Are Some Theories of Aggression?
There are three broad theories of aggression:
The instinct view, most commonly associated with Sigmund Freud and Konrad Lorenz, contended that aggressive energy will accumulate from within, like water accumulating behind a dam. Although the available evidence offers little support for this view, aggression is biologically influenced by heredity, blood chemistry, and the brain.
According to the second view, frustration causes anger and hostility. Givenaggressive cues, anger may provoke aggression. Frustration stems not from deprivation itself but from the gap between expectations and achievements.
The social learning view presents aggression as learned behaviour. Byexperience and by observing others’ success, we sometimes learn that aggression pays. Social learning enables family and subculture influences on aggression, as well as media influences.
What Are Some Influences on Aggression?
Many factors exert influence on aggression. One factor is aversive experiences, which include not only frustrations but also discomfort, heat, pain, and personal attacks, both physical and verbal.
Arousal from almost any source, even physical exercise or sexual stimulation, can be transformed into other emotions, such as anger.
Aggressive cues, such as the presence of a gun, increase the likelihood of aggressive behaviour.
Viewing violence
(1) breeds a modest increase in aggressive behaviour, especially in people who are provoked;
(2) desensitizes viewers to aggression
(3) alters viewers’ perceptions of reality. These findings parallel the results of research on the effects of viewing violent pornography, which can increase men’s aggression against women and distort their perceptions of women’s responses to sexual coercion.
Television permeates the daily life of millions of people and portrays considerable violence. Correlational and experimental studies converge on the conclusion that heavy exposure to televised violence correlates with aggressive behaviour.
Playing violent video games may increase aggressive thinking, feelings, and behaviour even more than television or movies do because the experience involves much more active participation than those other media.
Much aggression is committed by groups. Circumstances that provoke individuals may also provoke groups. By diffusing responsibility and polarizing actions, group situations amplify aggressive reactions.
How Can Aggression Be Reduced?
Contrary to the catharsis hypothesis, expressing aggression by catharsis tends to breed further aggression, not reduce it.
The social learning approach suggests controlling aggression by counteracting the factors that provoke it: by reducing aversive stimulation, by rewarding and modelling nonaggression, and by eliciting reactions incompatible with aggression.
catharsis?
Freud vs Lorenz on agrgession?
The two agreed that aggressive energy involves instinctive behaviour(it is innate, unlearned, and universal). If not discharged, it supposedly builds up until it explodes or until an appropriate stimulus “releases” it, like a mouse releasing a mousetrap.
what is the neural influences of aggression?
hypothalamus activity increases hostility.
Brain activation works with humans, too. After receiving painless electrical stimulation in her amygdala (a brain core area involved with emotion), one woman became enraged and smashed her guitar against the wall, barely missing her psychiatrist’s head.
he prefrontal cortex, which acts like an emergency brake on deeper brain areas involved in aggressive behaviour, was 14 percent less active than normal in murderers (excluding those who had been abused by their parents) and 15 percent smaller in the antisocial men. Another study found that more aggressive and violent men had smaller amygdalas
what are the situational factors that contribute in aggression?
Sleep deprivation reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for self-control.
genetic influences on aggression?
Recent research has identified a specific gene (MAOA-L) linked to aggression; some even call it the “warrior gene” or the “violence gene.”
biochemical influences on aggression?
- alcohol
- testosterone
- diet deficiency: omega-3 fatty acids, and calcium
- level of sugar and trans-fat consumption
frustration-aggression theory?
Frustration: blocking of a goal directed behavior, triggers readiness to aggress
Berkowitz’s observation about aggression?
Berkowitz theorized that frustration produces aggression only when people become upset—for instance, when someone who frustrates us could have chosen to act otherwise, leading to feelings of anger.
○ Weapons/aggression cues also play a role = PRIMING
○ Weapons effect increases aggressive thoughts, hostile appraisals, and overall aggression
Berkowitz, frustration-Aggression study?
○ Other person will shock you if they don’t like your idea (participants did it in pairs, other person was a confederate)
○ One small shock up to 7 shocks if they thought the idea was terrible
○ One condition: person’s idea would always be accepted
○ Other condition: participant receives 7 shocks for having a bad idea
○ In the room, there were either weapons or non aggressive items present in the room; Weapons Effect
relative deprivation and aggression?
Frustration is not only caused by complete deprivation; more often, frustration arises from the gap between expectations and attainments
