Outline What is aggression Some Theories of Aggression Biological Perspective Frustration Perspective Learned Social Behavior Perspective What are some influences on aggression Aversive Incidents ID: 918697
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Slide1
Aggression & Violence
Slide2Outline
What is aggression?
Some Theories of Aggression
Biological PerspectiveFrustration PerspectiveLearned Social Behavior PerspectiveWhat are some influences on aggression?Aversive IncidentsArousalMedia InfluenceHow can aggresion be reduced?CatharsisSocial Learning ApproachCulture Change and World Violence
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Slide3What is aggression?
Physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt someone.
Excludes unintentional harm (car accidents), events includes pain as an unavoidable pain (dental treatments) or assisted suicide (euthanasia).Includes kicks, slap, threats, insults, even gossip, destroying property, lying and any other behaviors whose goal is to hurt.3
Slide4What is aggression?
Animals display two types of aggression:
Social aggression: displays of rage.
Silent aggression: stalking the prey.Human also show two types of aggression:Hostile aggression: springs from anger and aim to injure.Instrumental aggression: an aggressive behavior intended to achieve a goal. Aggression is used as a tool.4
Slide5What is aggression?
Most of the terrorist attacks are instrumental aggression. Terrorists seek personal significance (being a hero or martyr-şehit).
Wars are also instrumental aggression.
Bullying – adolescents who bully others often seek to demonstrate their dominance.But, murders are hostile aggression. 5
Slide6Some Theories of Aggression
Biological Perspective
Are humans benign or brute?
Rousseau: blames society for social evils.Hobbes: credits society for restraining the brute.Freud: aggressive drive is inborn and inevitable.Instinct Theory and Evolutionary PsychologyAggressive energy is instinctive.It redirects toward others the energy of a primitive death urge (Freud).6
Slide7Some Theories of Aggression
Biological Perspective
Instinct Theory and Evolutionary Psychology
But this theory fails to explain the variations in aggressiveness among different people and cultures.The famous view of «male aggression» comes from this point of view.Competing with males and being successful bring social status.Yet, this theory may help to understand why aggression is highest during adolescence. Competition for mates and status are relatively high that time.
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Slide8Some Theories of Aggression
Biological Perspective
Neural Influences
Aggression is a very complex behavior that no one can spot a particular brain area responsible.But in some studies, activation of some brain areas increases hostility.Does this mean that violent people’s brain are in some way abnormal?Prefrontal cortex is less active and smaller.8
Slide9Some Theories of Aggression
Biological Perspective
Genetic Influences
There is no one type of aggressiveness. It varies among individuals.According to some researchers, neither bad genes nor a bad environment alone predispose later aggressiveness and antisocial behavior; rather, genes predispose some people to be more sensitive and responsive to maltreatment. So, nature and nurture interact.9
Slide10Some Theories of Aggression
Biological Perspective
Biochemical Influences
Alcohol: it unleashes aggression and reduces self-awareness. It also makes people tend to interpret unclear acts as provocations (ne itiyosun kavgası).Testosterone: some amount of research showed that testosterone and human aggressiveness does correlate.Low Serotonin: low level of the neurotransmitter serotonin, for which the impulse-controlling frontal lobes have many receptors.10
Slide11Some Theories of Aggression
Biological Perspective
Biochemical Influences
Biology and behavior interaction: It is important to remember that the traffic between testosterone, serotonin, and behavior flows both ways. Testosterone, for example, may facilitate dominance and aggressiveness, but dominating or defeating behavior also boosts testosterone levels (winning teams commit more postgame assaults).11
Slide12Some Theories of Aggression
Frustration Perspective
Frustration:
The blocking of goal-directed behavior (hayal kırıklığı).Frustration-aggression theory: The theory that frustration triggers readiness to aggress.Frustration grows when our motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expected gratification, and when the blocking is complete.12
Slide13Some Theories of Aggression
Frustration Perspective
We learn to inhibit direct retaliation, especially when others might disapprove
or punish; instead, we displace our hostilities to safer targets.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.For example, intense American anger over 9/11 contributed to the eagerness to attack Iraq.Note that frustration-aggression theory is designed to explain hostile aggression, not instrumental aggression.
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Slide14Some Theories of Aggression
Frustration Perspective
Laboratory tests of the frustration-aggression theory have produced mixed results:
Sometimes frustration increased aggressiveness, sometimes not.Berkowitz revised the classic model and found that frustration produces anger, an emotional readiness to aggress. Anger arises when someone who frustrates us could have chosen to act otherwise.Cues associated with aggression amplify aggression.14
Slide15Some Theories of Aggression
Aggression cues: bats, sticks, witnesses, etc...
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Slide16Some Theories of Aggression
Frustration Perspective
Relative Deprivation
Frustration is not only caused by complete deprivation; more often frustration arises from the gap between expectations and attainments.When your expectations are fulfilled by your attainments, and when your desires are reachable at your income, you feel satisfied rather than frustrated.The perception that one is less well-off than others with whom one compares oneself.16
Slide17Some Theories of Aggression
Frustration Perspective
Relative Deprivation
Palestinian suicide bombers have not been the most deprived of Palestinians. Like Northern Ireland’s IRA, Italy’s Red Brigades, and Germany’s Bader-Meinhof gang, they are mostly middle class.In cultures where television is a universal appliance, it helps turn absolute deprivation (lacking what others have) into relative deprivation (feeling deprived).Social media?17
Slide18Some Theories of Aggression
Learned Social Behavior Perspective
Rewards of Aggression
We often witness that aggression pays.A child whose aggressive acts successfully intimidate other children will likely become increasingly aggressive.Aggressive hockey score more goals than nonaggressive players.“Kill one, frighten ten thousand”18
Slide19Some Theories of Aggression
Learned Social Behavior Perspective
Observational Learning
The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded and punished.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En7zdMkb41YFamily: physically aggressive children tend to have had physically punitive parents who disciplined them by modeling aggression with screaming, slapping and beating.19
Slide20Some Theories of Aggression
Learned Social Behavior Perspective
Observational Learning
Culture: In communities where “macho” images are admired, aggression is readily transmitted to new generations.The broader culture also matters. Show social psychologists a man from a nondemocratic culture that has great economic inequality, that prepares men to be warriors, and that has engaged in war, and they will show you someone who is predisposed to aggressive behavior.20
Slide21Some Theories of Aggression
Aggression
is most likely when we are aroused and it seems safe and rewarding to aggress.
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Slide22What are some influences on aggression?
Aversive Incidents
Pain: both physiological and psychological pain, intense heat or headache.
Today’s ethical guidelines restrict researchers’ use of painful stimuli.Heat: 22
Slide23What are some influences on aggression?
Aversive Incidents
Attacks:
Being attacked or insulted by another is especially conducive to aggression.Intentional attacks breed retaliatory attacks.23
Slide24What are some influences on aggression?
Arousal
A given state of bodily arousal feeds one emotion or another,
depending on how the person interprets and labels the arousal.Arousal feeds emotions.Sexual arousal and other forms of arousal, such as anger, can therefore amplify one another.Spill-over effect.The arousal, combined with hostile thoughts and feelings, may form a recipe for aggressive behavior.24
Slide25What are some influences on aggression?
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Slide26What are some influences on aggression?
Arousal
Aggression cues
Children who had played with toy guns became more willing to knock down another child’s blocks.This is especially so when a weapon is perceived as an instrument of violence rather than a recreational item. For example, for hunters, seeing a hunting rifle does not prime aggressive thoughts, though it does for nonhunters.26
Slide27What are some influences on aggression?
Remoteness
from the victim facilitates cruelty. A knife can kill someone, but a knife attack
requires a great deal more personal contact than pulling a trigger from a distance.27
Slide28What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Pornography and Sexual Violence
A typical sexually violent episode finds a man forcing himself upon a woman. She at first resists and tries to fight off her attacker. Gradually she becomes sexually aroused, and her resistance melts. By the end she is in ecstasy, pleading for more.Depiction of sexual violence is common in popular adult videos.28
Slide29What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Pornography and Sexual Violence
Viewing such fictional scenes of a man overpowering and arousing a woman can distort one’s perceptions of how women respond to sexual coercion. increase men’s aggression against women.“Rape myth” is that some women would welcome sexual assault and that «no doesn’t really mean no»
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Slide30What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Pornography and Sexual Violence
Exposure to pornography increases acceptance of the rape myth.Note that the sexual message (that many women enjoy being “taken”) was subtle and unlikely to elicit counterarguing.That is why even women often believe that some other woman might enjoy being sexually overpowered.
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Slide31What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Aggression against Women
Pornography contributes to men’s actual aggression toward women.The reverse is also true. Rapists, serial killers and child molesters report using pornograhpy at unusually high rates.31
Slide32What are some influences on aggression?
Experimental studies showed us that the reverse version might not be true. Because:
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Slide33What are some influences on aggression?
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Slide34What are some influences on aggression?
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Slide35What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Television and the Internet
In 73 percent of violent scenes, the aggressors went unpunished.In 58 percent, the victim was not shown to experience pain.In children’s programs, only 5 percent of violence was shown to have any long-term consequences.Two-thirds depicted violence as funny. To adults, violence seems less violent when humorous.
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Slide36What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Television and the Internet
The more violent the content of the child’s TV viewing, the more aggressive the child.Maybe aggressive children prefer aggressive programs. Or maybe some underlying third factor, such as lower intelligence, predisposes some children to prefer both aggressive programs and aggressive behavior.Turkish series?36
Slide37What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Television and the Internet
Why does TV viewing affect behavior?Media portrayals also evoke imitation (like Bandura’s experiment).Arousal tends to spill over: One type of arousal energizes other behaviors.37
Slide38What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Television and the Internet
Does prolonged viewing desensitize us to cruelty?After witnessing thousands of acts of cruelty, there is good reason to expect a similar emotional numbing.When we find ourselves in new situations, uncertain how to act, we rely on social scripts —culturally provided mental instructions for how to act.38
Slide39What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Video Games
Increases arousal. Heart rate and blood pressure rise.Increases aggressive thinking.Increases aggressive feelings.Increases aggressive behaviors.39
Slide40What are some influences on aggression?
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Slide41What are some influences on aggression?
Media Influence
Group Influences
Through social “contagion,” groups magnify aggressive tendencies.Groups can amplify aggressive tendencies.41
Slide42How can aggresion be reduced?
Catharsis
Is
emotional release.Some psychologists, believing that catharsis is therapeutic, advise parents to encourage children’s release of emotional tension through aggressive play.If viewing erotica provides an outlet for sexual impulses, places with high consumption of sex magazines should have low rape rates. After viewing erotica people should experience diminished sexual desire and men should be less likely to view and treat women as sexual objects. But studies show the opposites are true.
Sexually explicit
videos are an aphrodisiac; they feed sexual fantasies that fuel a variety of sexual
behaviors.
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Slide43How can aggression
be reduced?
Social Learning Approach
Children become less aggressive when caregivers ignore their aggressive behavior and reinforce their nonaggressive behavior . Punishing the aggressor is less consistently effective. Threatened punishment deters aggression only under ideal conditions: when the punishment is strong, prompt, and surewhen it is combined with reward for the desired behaviorwhen the recipient is not angryWe must prevent aggression before it happens.
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Slide44How can aggression
be reduced?
Culture Change and World Violence
«The Vikings slaughtered many people but their descendants in Sweden haven’t fought a war in nearly 200 years.»44
Slide45Summary
What is aggression?
Some Theories of Aggression
Biological PerspectiveFrustration PerspectiveLearned Social Behavior PerspectiveWhat are some influences on aggression?Aversive IncidentsArousalMedia InfluenceHow can aggresion be reduced?CatharsisSocial Learning ApproachCulture Change and World Violence45