Aggression:
Why We Hurt Other People?
Can We Prevent it?
Chapter Outline
I. What Is Aggression?
What Is Aggression?
An aggressive action is intentional
behavior aimed at causing either
physical or psychological pain.
What Is Aggression?
Hostile aggression is an act of
aggression stemming from feelings
of anger and aimed at inflicting pain.
What Is Aggression?
Instrumental aggression is
aggression that serves as a means to
some goal other than causing pain.
What Is Aggression?
• Is Aggression Inborn, or Learned?
Scientists do not agree on whether
aggression is innate or learned. The debate
has been raging for centuries.
What Is Aggression?
• Is Aggression Inborn, or Learned?
Freud postulated that humans have innate
instincts toward life, Eros, and towards
death and aggression, Thanatos.
What Is Aggression?
• Is Aggression Instinctual?
Situational? Optional?
Even in the most aggression-prone species,
aggression is an optional strategy and is
determined by the organism’s previous
social experiences and by the specific
social context in which the organism finds
itself.
What Is Aggression?
• Aggressiveness and Culture
Berkowitz (1993) suggests that humans
seem to have an inborn tendency to
respond to certain provocative stimuli by
striking out against the perpetrator.
What Is Aggression?
• Aggressiveness and Culture
Whether or not this aggressive action is
expressed depends on the interaction of
these innate propensities with learned
inhibitory responses and the nature of the
social situation.
What Is Aggression?
• Aggressiveness and Culture
In humans, innate patterns of behavior are
infinitely malleable; thus, cultures vary
widely in the degree of aggressiveness.
What Is Aggression?
• Aggressiveness and Culture
The evidence is inconclusive on whether or
not aggression has an instinctual
component, but it is clear that aggression
can be modified by situational factors.
Two examples of this are aggression
among the Iroquois and the regional
differences in aggressive behavior in the
United States.
Chapter Outline
II. Neural and Chemical Influences
on Aggression
Neural and Chemical Influences on
Aggression
The amygdala is an area in the core of
the brain associated with aggressive
behavior. But even if the amygdala is
directly stimulated, whether or not the
organism will aggress depends on
situational factors.
Neural and Chemical Influences on
Aggression
Serotonin and Testosterone
Serotonin is a chemical in the brain that may inhibit aggressive impulses.
Testosterone is a male sex hormone associated with aggression. A wide variety of studies have shown that
men are more aggressive than women are. However, the research on gender differences is complex and
results depend on situational and cultural factors.
Neural and Chemical Influences on
Aggression
• Alcohol and Aggression
Alcohol serves as a disinhibitor and leads
people to be more likely to commit actions
frowned upon by society; thus alcohol can
foster aggression when people are
provoked.
Neural and Chemical Influences on
Aggression
• Pain, Discomfort, and Aggression
Both animal and human studies show that pain will increase the probability that an organism will aggress.
Other forms of bodily discomfort (heat, humidity, air pollution, offensive odors) may also act to lower the
threshold for aggressive behaviors.
Chapter Outline
III. Social Situations and
Aggression
Social Situations and Aggression
• Frustration and Aggression
Frustration-aggression theory says that
frustration, the perception that you are
being prevented from obtaining a goal,
will increase the probability of an
aggressive response.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Frustration and Aggression
The closer someone is to a goal, the
greater the frustration when one is
thwarted and the higher the probability
that the person will act aggressively.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Frustration and Aggression
Aggression also increases when
frustration is unexpected. The perception
of relative deprivation, feeling that one
has less than one deserves or has been
led to expect or has less than similar
people, can increase aggressive
behavior.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Being Provoked and Reciprocating
People usually feel the need to
reciprocate after they are provoked by
aggressive behavior from another person.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Being Provoked and Reciprocating
If we think the provocation was
unintentional, we are unlikely to
reciprocate. And if there are mitigating
circumstances, we may not aggress, so
long as the circumstances are known at
the time of the aggression.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Aggressive Objects as Cues
An aggressive stimulus is an object that
is associated with aggressive responses
(for example, a gun), and whose mere
presence can increase the probability of
aggression.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Aggressive Objects as Cues
Social Situations and Aggression
• Imitation and Aggression
A major cause of aggression is social
learning. Bandura and associates (1961)
demonstrated social learning theory, the
theory that we learn social behavior (for
example, aggression) by observing others
and imitating them.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violence in the Media: TV, Movies,
and Video Games
A number of long-term studies indicate
that the more violence individuals watch
on TV as children, the more violence they
exhibit years later as teens and adults.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violence in the Media: TV, Movies,
and Video Games
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violence in the Media: TV, Movies,
and Video Games
Adults as well as children are influenced
by violent television.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violence in the Media: TV, Movies,
and Video Games
Repeated exposure to horrifying events
has a numbing effect on our sensitivity to
those events.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violence in the Media: TV, Movies,
and Video Games
Adolescents and adults who watch more
than four hours of television per day are
more likely than people who watch less
television to have an exaggerated view of the
level of violence that occurs outside their
home and they have a greater fear of being
personally assaulted.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violence in the Media: TV, Movies,
and Video Games
At least five reactions to media violence help explain
why exposure to violence in the media might increase
aggression: “If they can do it, so can I.”, “Oh, so
that’s how you do it!”, “I think it must be aggressive
feelings that I’m experiencing.”, “Ho-hum, another
brutal beating; what’s on the other channel?”, and “I
had better get him before he gets me!”
Social Situations and Aggression
• Does Violence Sell?
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violent Pornography and Violence
Against Women
During the past three decades, almost half of all rapes
or attempted rapes are attributed to date rape. Scripts
are ways of behaving socially that we learn implicitly
from our culture. The sexual scripts adolescents are
exposed to suggest that females should resist males’
sexual advances and that males should be persistent.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violent Pornography and Violence
Against Women
There has been an increase in the
availability of magazines, films, and
videos depicting vivid, explicit sexual
behavior.
Social Situations and Aggression
• Violent Pornography and Violence
Against Women
However, experimental evidence
regarding the effects of pornography on
violence against women is very complex.
One conclusion that can be made is that
violent sexual pornography presents a
clear problem for our society and it
increases aggression against women.
Chapter Outline
IV. How to Reduce Aggression
How To Reduce Aggression
• Does Punishing Aggression Reduce
Aggressive Behavior?
For children, harsh punishment provides a
model of aggression and does not prevent
a child from engaging in the forbidden
behavior when the child is unsupervised.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Does Punishing Aggression Reduce
Aggressive Behavior?
The threat of mild punishment, swiftly
administered, does, however, seem to
reduce aggression. The combination of
education and mild punishment has been
successful in efforts to reduce the
occurrence of bullying behavior.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Does Punishing Aggression Reduce
Aggressive Behavior?
For adults, the research evidence is mixed.
Laboratory experiments suggest that under
ideal circumstances punishment can
reduce aggression. But in real life,
punishment occurs under anything but
ideal conditions.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Does Punishing Aggression Reduce
Aggressive Behavior?
Berkowitz (1993) suggests that it is the
swiftness and certainty of punishment
rather than its severity that is important in
leading to reductions in aggression.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Does Punishing Aggression Reduce
Aggressive Behavior?
How To Reduce Aggression
• Catharsis and Aggression
The common belief that one can “blow off
steam” and “get it out of your system” is
an oversimplification of Freud’s
psychoanalytic notion of catharsis.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Catharsis and Aggression
According to this idea, performing an
aggressive act relieves built-up aggressive
energies and hence reduces the likelihood
of further aggressive behavior.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Catharsis and Aggression
However, controlled studies suggest that
attempting to reduce one’s anger by acting
violently increases, rather than decreases,
subsequent aggression and hostility.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Catharsis and Aggression
Research has found that when people are
allowed to express their aggression, they
later feel greater dislike and hostility toward
their victims.
How To Reduce Aggression
• Catharsis and Aggression
This effect is magnified when a nation is at
war. Being at war weakens the population’s
inhibitions against aggression, leads to
imitation of aggression, makes aggressive
responses more acceptable, and numbs
people and makes them unsympathetic
toward the victims. Also, war legitimizes the
use of violent solutions to address difficult
problems.
How To Reduce Aggression
• The Effects of War on General Aggression
How To Reduce Aggression
• What Are We Supposed to Do with
Our Anger?
There is an important difference between
being angry and expressing that anger in a
violent and destructive manner.
Expressing anger nonviolently is an
assertive response that avoids the dangers
of either violent expression or of
repression of the feelings.
How To Reduce Aggression
• What Are We Supposed to Do with
Our Anger?
One way to reduce aggression in another
person is for the person who caused the
frustration to take responsibility, apologize,
and indicate it won’t happen again.
How To Reduce Aggression
• What Are We Supposed to Do with
Our Anger?
Children exposed to models who behave
nonaggressively when provoked show a
much lower frequency of aggression than
children who were not exposed to these
models.
How To Reduce Aggression
• What Are We Supposed to Do with
Our Anger?
In most societies it is the people who lack
proper social skills who are most prone to
violent solutions to interpersonal
problems.
How To Reduce Aggression
• What Are We Supposed to Do with
Our Anger?
Thus one way to reduce violence is to teach
people how to communicate anger and
criticism constructively and how to
negotiate and compromise.
How To Reduce Aggression
• What Are We Supposed to Do with
Our Anger?
Building empathy, for example by teaching
empathy in school, not only reduces
aggressiveness but also can increase self-
esteem, generosity, and positive attitudes.
Chapter Outline
V. Could the Columbine Massacre
Have Been Prevented?
Could the Columbine Massacre
Have Been Prevented?
Aronson (2000) suggests that although the violent acts of the
Columbine massacre were pathological, it would be a mistake to
dismiss them as just the result of individual pathology.
Could the Columbine Massacre
Have Been Prevented?
What is necessary to acknowledge is the social situation that children
and adolescents face in schools. Thus, making our schools safer by
changing the negative, exclusionary social atmosphere may help reduce
the frequency of violence in schools.
