Lecture 5: Aggression Flashcards
(22 cards)
What is aggression?
Aggression can be defined as behaviour that is intended to harm another individual who does not wish to be harmed. This depends on the social and cultural context.
What is a Type A personality?
- Known as the coronary prone personality
- Individuals are overactive, achievement orientated and competitive.
What does research say about the difference between Type A and Type B people in terms of aggression?
- Type A tend to be more aggressive to competitors that Type B (Carver & Glass 1978)
- Type A managers were more in conflict with peers and those who worked under them compared to their bosses (Baron 1989)
- Type A is linked to increased driving anger (Feng et al 2017)
Effects of alcohol on aggression
- Alcohol stops our inhibitions
- It effects cortical control where thinking and other cognitive functions are carried out.
- Alcohol myopia: narrows attention to provocative cues in our environment
Taylor & Sears 1988 Alcohol study
- Competitive reaction time task - pp who responded more slowly would receive an electric shock from the opponent
- Pp were told they could should the intensity of the shock, but they were all low intensity
- Confederates would encourage the pp
- Pp who drank alcohol gave more intense shocks after being pressured
What some findings of placebo alcohol on aggression?
- Pp who thought they had consumed alcohol were more aggressive even if they were given a non-alcoholic drink. Actual alcohol levels were not related to aggression.
- Reading alcohol related words can increase aggression
What is disinhibition?
A reduction in social rules that stops us from behaving antisocially or in an immoral way.
How can disinhibition be triggered by being online
- People often say and do things that they wouldn’t normally do.
- It lowers restraint and empathy
What are Suler’s six factors to explain online disinhibition?
1) Dissociative anonymity: online individuals have complete anonymity
2) Invisibility: not feeling seen or heard can give people courage to say things (no eye contact)
3) Asynchronicity: Emails or words arent immediately seen, don’t need to cope to an immediate response
4) Solipsistic introjection: feeling like you know people who are on line - can lead to the feeling that anything can be shared
5) Dissociative imagination: seeing the world as a game where social rules dont apply
6) Minimisation of authority: absence of authority may make people willing to speak out
What is deindividuation?
Situational changes that make people lose their identity and therefore influence the level of aggression exhibited.
How does deindividuation work?
Lowers the likelihood of being punished
- presence of others
- anonymity
- diffusion of responsibility
- group size
What is dehumanisation?
Thinking of another person as anonymous, without thoughts feelings or emotions
It is…
- Blatant and subtle
- Denies pain suffered by the victim
- Long history in its role in violence eg: mass killings Rwandan genocide
Crowd violence: Gustav Le Bon 1895
- Stated that the crowd was mindless, violent and irrational
- People feel anonymous in a crowd situation
- More suggestable to specific behaviours
- Idea that crowd behaviour is contagious
What is the Frustration Aggression hypothesis? (Dollard et al 1939)
- Theory of contextual influence seeking to address lynching murders in the USA in 1930s
- States aggression is always caused by frustration
- Aggression directed towards the source of the frustration or at others (displacement)
What are some criticisms of the Frustration Aggression hypothesis?
- Not clear how frustration leads to aggression
- Frustration does not always lead to aggression
- Some forms of aggression are not linked to frustration
What is social learning theory?
Learning is by direct experience or by vicarious reinforcement
Bobo doll study (Bandura 1963)
- Children watched an adult play with an inflated bobo doll
- There were four conditions: live videotape, cartoon or control
- Children who watched the adult be aggressive were more likely to act aggressive themselves
- Live videotape was the most effective
Peaceful societies
- Chewong - Malay peninsula: No words for quarrelling, fighting or aggression
- Ifaluk - Micronesia: In 12 months there was one tiny act of aggression
- Kadar India: Crime was totally absent according to the local police
Why does the south of USA have more homicides than the north?
- Historical issues with levels of policing
- Origins of settlers in these regions: People in the north were farmers, people in the south were cattle herders.
Fujihara et al 1999 asked students from Japan, Spain and the USA about past aggressive behaviours, he found…
- Indirect verbal aggression seen as more acceptable in individualistic cultures
- direct verbal aggression seen as more justifiable in collectivist cultures
- Physical aggression seen as more acceptable in individualistic cultures if you are defending yourself
What was Forbes et al procedure?
- Studied Chinese and US University students
- Pp read vignettes describing a conflict situation, varied by ingroup (close friends) and outgroup (acquaintances)
What was Forbes et als findings?
- More conflict-reducing and less physical aggression in collectivist sample (Chinease pp)
- More aggressive responses towards outgroup members
- Group status was more important that collectivist or individualistic in predicting aggression
- Effect of group status on aggression was not stronger in collectivist sample (Chinese pp)
Findings were consistent with other evidence about C/I dimension and outgroup aggression
