Human Aggression

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Human Aggression

• PSY 321
• Sanchez

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In all of nature, there is nothing so
threatening to humanity as humanity itself.
Lewis Thomas, 1981
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Todays Agenda

• DEFINITIONS
• CAUSES AND DETERMINANTS OF AGGRESSION
• SPECIAL CASE MEDIA VIOLENCE
• REDUCING AGGRESSION

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Aggression

• Aggression -- Intentional action aimed at doing
  harm or causing harm

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Aggression

• Aggression -- Intentional action aimed at doing
  harm or causing harm
• Aggression?
• Injuring someone accidentally?
• Swinging a stick at someone but missing?
• Insulting someone?
• Deliberately failing to prevent harm?

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Types of Aggression Instrumental

• Instrumental aggression
• Harm inflicted as a means to some goal other than
  causing pain
• Goals include
• Personal gain
• Attention
• Self-defense

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Types of Aggression Instrumental Aggression

• Immediate conditions
• Opportunity for gain with high reward and low
  perceived risk
• Long term conditions
• Poverty or other challenging economic factors
• Perceive crime as primary means to
  resources/respect
• Norms foster aggression as way to achieve
  resources

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Types of Aggression Emotional

• Emotional aggression
• Harm inflicted for its own sake, to cause pain
• Often impulsive
• But can be calm, calculating

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Types of Aggression Emotional Aggression

• Immediate conditions
• Threat to self-esteem, status, or respect,
  particularly in public situations
• Aggression to save face
• Long term conditions
• Repeated threats to self-worth or status

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Emotional Aggression A Case Study (Katherine
Newman, 2004)

• School shootings
• Commonalities
• Perpetrators had low social status, respect, and
  self-esteem
• Communities were small, tight-knit, and isolated
• Associated masculinity violence
• The small-town social structure prevented people
  from heeding the warning signs

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Distinguishing Emotional from Instrumental
Aggression

• Example Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfields
  ear
• Instrumental?
• Emotional?
• Maybe both mechanisms are operating in most cases
• Can think of any purely emotional aggression
  example?

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The United States How aggressive are we?

• The Violent Nature of American Society
• 1963-1973
• 46,121 Americans killed in the Vietnam War
• 84,644 Americans shot to death in America
• Homicide-by-gun rate in America
• 35 times higher than Germany, Denmark, or
  England, 7 times higher than Canada or France

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Table 11.1 The Violent Crime Clock
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Gender Differences

• Universal finding that men are more violent than
  women.
• Differences stable over time and place.
• However.type of aggression matters

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Gender Aggression

• Intent to Harm
• What ways can we inflict harm on others other
  than physical violence?
• Direct aggression Verbal or physical aggression
• Indirect aggression Inflicting harm in covert
  (nonphysical) ways
• Relational aggression

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Gender and Indirect/Direct Aggression
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Why Are People So Aggressive?

• Instinct theories
• Freud
• Psychoanalytic theory
• Death instinct vs. life instinct
• Aggression death instinct is turned outward at
  others
• Evolutionary theories
• Darwin
• Genetic survival
• Genetic selection for aggression

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Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

• Modeling
• Learn how to behave prosocially
• Learn how to behave aggressively

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Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

• Bobo doll study
• ½ kids watched adult beat up doll
• ½ kids not exposed to the behavior
• Kids allowed to play with doll
• Results??

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• Social learning clip 19 (Bobo doll)

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Why Are People So Aggressive?

• Evolutionary theories
• Social learning theory
• a better question may be
• When do people aggress?
• Under what conditions are people likely to
  aggress?
• What situational factors cause people to aggress?

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Situational Factors
• Frustration-Aggression theory -- frustration
  always leads to aggression
• Study
• Young children in room with toys
• ½ cant play with toys, then allowed to play
• ½ can play with toys
• Results frustrated kids destroyed the toys

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Situational Factors
• Frustration-aggression theory
• Closeness of goal as a factor of
  frustration-aggression link
• Study
• Confederate cut in line in front of people
• ½ time cut in front of 2nd person in line
• ½ time cut in front of 12th person in line
• Results people standing behind intruder more
  aggressive when confederate cut 2nd person in
  line (closer to their goal)

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Situational Factors
• Frustration-Aggression theory
• Aggression increases when frustration is
  unexpected
• Study
• Students hired to call strangers for donations
• Students worked on a commission
• ½ students expected a high rate of contributions
• ½ students expected far less success
• Experiment rigged so donors did not donate
• Results callers with high expectations were
  more verbally aggressive toward the non-donors

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Situational Factors
• Displaced aggression
• Aggression not directed at source of the
  frustration, but at a different, lower status
  target
• Remember Dollard et al. (1939) as cotton prices
  went down (i.e., less income), lynchings increased

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Berkowitzs modification of frustration-aggress
  ion theory
• frustration leads to anger
• anger with an aggressive cue leads to aggression
• aggressive cue object associated with aggressive
  responses (e.g., a gun)

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Berkowitzs modification of frustration-aggress
  ion
• Induced Ps to feel angry
• Left in a room with gun (violent) or racket
  (neutral)
• Ps allowed to administer shocks to other P
• Ps gave more shocks to other when gun present

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When Are People Aggressive?

• Alcohol myopia (Steele Josephs, 1990)
• Intoxication facilitates aggression by impairing
  cognitive processing, narrows attention
• Results is more extreme, less moderated behavior
• Aggressive response often powerful and simple
• Inhibiting response often weaker and more complex

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Heat

• More violent crimes (rape, murder, riots,
  assaults)
• In summer months
• In hot years
• In hot cities
• Heat increases
• Hit by pitch incidents
• Horn-honking
• Interpret ambiguous event in hostile terms

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Summary People are more aggressive when they are

• Frustrated
• Angry
• Exposed to aggressive cues
• Drunk
• Hot

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Special Case Media Violence

• Does violence in the media make people more
  aggressive?
• Statistics
• TV is on 28 hrs/wk for preteens and 23 hrs/wk for
  teens
• Prime shows average 5 or 6 acts of violence per
  hour
• Sat morning kids programs average 20-25 per hour
• Most violent TV appears before school and after
  school

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Special Case Media Violence

• Does violence in the media make people more
  aggressive?
• Conflicting opinions
• Catharsis Hypothesis
• Watching violence purges aggressive tendencies
• vs. Social learning
• Watching violence increases aggressive tendencies
• Correlational and Experimental Evidence

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Special Case Media Violence

• Procedure (Liebert Baron, 1972)
• ½ children exposed to an extremely violent show
• ½ children exposed to nonviolent sporting event
• Each child allowed to play in another room with a
  group of children
• Observed aggression/violence in childrens
  playing

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DV Average duration of aggressive responses
Television show
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Effects of Other Violent Media

• Video Games
• 8 to 13-year-old boys in U.S. average 7.5 hours
  of video games per week
• 15 of male entering college students play at
  least 6 hours/week

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Americas Army
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• Its awesome, says James Parker, 27, a
  Washington computer network administrator.
• You can carjack any car, go to the seedy part
  of town, beep the horn and pick up a prostitute.
  Then you take her to a dark street and the car
  starts shaking. When the prostitute jumps out,
  your money is down but your energy is full
• Note People can recover their money by killing
  the woman.
• Source The Washington Post 8/24/02, p. A1

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What does the research say?

• Anderson Dill, 2000 Study 1
• examined correlation between amount of time
  playing violent video games and aggressive
  delinquent behavior
• r .46!! (quite high)

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Anderson Dill Study 2 Experiment

• College students randomly assigned to play a
  video game 3 times over a week
• Wolfenstein 3D violent game
• Myst nonviolent game
• DV Level/duration of noise blast given to
  opponent after losing a game in the lab

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Results of Study 2
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Recent Meta-Analysis (Anderson Bushman, 2001)

• Reviewed 54 studies with 4,200 participants
• Playing violent video games resulted in
• Increased aggression
• Decreased helping
• Increased aggressive thoughts
• Increased anger
• Increased arousal
• Same effects for males and females, children and
  adults

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How does violent media cause aggression?

• Short-term effects
• Primes aggressive cognitions
• Increases arousal
• Increases anger
• Long-term effects
• Teaches people how to aggress
• People develop aggressive schemas
• They become desensitized to violence

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How Can Aggression Be Reduced?

• Catharsis Doesnt work
• Punishment Not a simple solution
• Deterrence Theory Punishment has to be severe,
  certain, and swift
• Corporal punishment increases aggression (Eron et
  al., 1991 Straus et al., 1997 Gershoff, 2002)
• Remove Cues to Aggression (Berkowitz)
• Provide Better Role Models (Bandura)

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