Displaced Aggression Flashcards
What are the two types of aggression?
DA and TDA
What is DA?
Aggression towards someone who was not the source of the aggression
What is TDA?
Disproportionate levels of aggression towards someone who provided a mild provocation
What may cause DA?
- Provocateur has power over you
- Provocateur leaves before retaliation
- Provocation is from an immaterial source
What are the Psychological Variables producing DA?
General Aggression Model (GAM)
Anger Rumination
Target Attributes
Cognitive load and displaced aggression
What is GAM (Anderson & Bushman, 2002) and the two aspects part of it?
GAM: Based on neural network models, proposing that memories are linked/associated. Activate one activates related ones
Two aspects:
Different routes to aggression (aggression cognition, negative affect, and arousal)
Aggressive priming: the psychological readiness to aggress via the activation of processes that increase the chance of acting aggressively
When does Aggressive priming (Anderson & Bushman, 2002) occur?
Following adverse events, that are either provocations, pain or frustrations.
May occur when remembering these events
Does aggressive priming lead to individuals always aggressing? And what about in the case for TDA?
No, they only have an increased chance of aggressing.
In the case of TDA, trigger may provide motivation or justification for aggressing once aggressive priming occurs. Even mild triggers may be enough to elicit high levels of aggression (Bushman et al., 2005)
What is Anger Rumination?
Constantly thinking about a negative event, and potentially thinking of revenge fantasies (Bushman et al., 2005). Normally you get over anger within 10-15 minutes (Tyson, 1998), however anger rumination prolongs it extensively
Does anger rumination increase the chance of DA and TDA? (Bushman et al., 2005)
Yes, as anger rumination prolongs aggressive priming, therefore DA and TDA have a high chance of happening over long periods of time
In one study people who ruminated engaged in higher TDA compared to those who did not
Ruminators are at a greater risk of DA
Target Attributes and DA, what are the findings?
Individuals who trigger provoked persons are more likely to receive aggression if they are perceived as having negative characteristics (Bushman et al., 2008).
One study, participants who were dissimilar or were outgroup members, and provoked the person received more TDA (Bushman et al., 2008)
What is Cognitive load?
Cognitive load: the level or amount of working memory that is being used for a task. High cognitive load = high resource use, impacting cognitive processes. Can increase TDA.
Behaviours of DA in society.
Some people are at greater risk of anger rumination, they may exhibit aggression towards romantic partners such as domestic abuse (Denson et al., 2006)
Animal abuse may also be aggressive displaced towards animals
Some types of abuse towards children may be DA
What groups may exhibit higher levels of DA?
Adolescents affiliated with gangs (Vasquez et al., 2012)
Gang members (Vasquez et al., 2015)
How can you reduce DA?
TDA towards out group members can be reduced through mechanism that target inter-group biases and group categorisation (Vasquez et al., 2007). Such as self-other comparison and self-disclosure.
Reducing anger rumination may also decrease DA
