Origin of Aggression

1. Ahnas P. A
1st M.Sc. Psychology

2.  Aggression is behaviour whose immediate intent is to harm or hurt someone.
 So it can be better understood as a behaviour directed toward the goal of harming
another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment.
 Aggression includes both physical aggression (hurting someone’s body) and social
aggression (such as bullying, cyberbullying, insults, harmful gossip, or social
exclusion that hurt feelings; Duhe et al., 2008).

3. Physical Aggression
 Hurting someone else’s body
intentionally.
Social aggression
 Hurting someone else’s feelings or
threatening their relationships.
Sometimes called relational
aggression. It includes cyberbullying
and some forms of in-person
bullying, insults, harmful gossips, or
social exclusion.
 Have dreadful consequences, could
lead to depression and sometimes to
committing suicide.

4.  Aggression is defined here as any action that is intended to hurt others. It can be
difficult to know someone’s intention.
 So a second distinction must be drawn between aggression-prosocial and
antisocial aggression.
 Prosocial aggression are acts that accept commonly accepted social norms.
 Antisocial aggression are acts that violate commonly accepted social norms.
 Some aggressive acts that falls between prosocial and anti social aggression might
be labelled as Sanctioned aggression.
 It is an aggression that is permissible according to the norms of the individual’s
social group.

5. • Aggression often has its
roots in conflict, which is
defined as a perceived
incompatibility of goals
between two or more
parties.
• What one party wants,
other party sees as
harmful to its interests.
• Despite the range and
variety of aggressive
behaviours, they
generally fall into two
distinct categories.

6. Instrumental aggression
 Aggression serving mastery needs,
used as a means to end, to control
other people; or to obtain valuable
resources.
 E.g.: Threatening harm and
demanding a wallet
Hostile aggression
 Aggression that is driven by anger
due to insult, disrespect, or other
threats to self-esteem or social
identity.
 E.g.: Punching someone in an
escalating barroom argument

7.  Instrumental and hostile forms of aggression show somewhat different patterns,
although the dividing line between these two is not always completely clear.
 For example, if someone who is insulted in public punches the provoker in the
nose, that aggressive act is likely driven both by anger and by consideration of the
act’s concrete effects-such as deterring that person and others from future
provocations (Bushman and Anderson, 2001a).

8.  Freud (1930) assumed that we have an instinct to aggress.
 His theory of the death instinct (Thanatos), he argued that aggression may be
turned inward self-destructively or directed outward, toward others.
 Freud believed aggression can be controlled.
 Most scientists believed aggression derives from inherited tendencies.
 Sociobiologists argued that aggression could be understood in terms of evolution.
 Aggression aids males in obtaining desirable mates and aids females in protecting
their young, principles of natural selection should operate over time to favour
certain forms of aggression.

9.  Human aggression is more complex and takes different forms from animal
aggression, and often occurs in quite different social contexts that are governed by
different social norms.
 Physical aggression is influenced by the male sex hormone testosterone and it
may be influenced by other biochemical factors, including the neurotransmitter
serotonin.
 Violence prone individuals also have different patterns of brain activation.
 There appears to be a genetic factor that is found on aggressive people, because
certain types of aggressive, antisocial behaviour clearly run in families.
 Despite these factors, it is also clear that social factors greatly influence the
expression of aggression in human beings.

10.  The most famous supporter of this theory was Sigmund Freud, who held that
aggression stems mainly from a powerful death wish (Thanatos) we all possess.
According to Freud, this instinct is initially aimed at self-destruction, but is soon
redirected outward, toward others.
 A related view was proposed by Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel Prize–winning ethologist,
who suggested that aggression springs mainly from an inherited fighting instinct,
which ensures that only the strongest males will obtain mates and pass their
genes on to the next generation (Lorenz, 1966, 1974).
 Most social psychologists rejected such ideas.
 Among the many reasons they did were these: (1) human beings aggress against
others in many different ways—everything from excluding them from social
groups to performing overt acts of violence against them.

11.  (2) The frequency of aggressive actions varies tremendously across human societies, so
that is much more likely to occur in some than in others (e.g., Fry, 1998).
 From Evolutionary point of view, throughout much of human history, men especially
have found aggression adaptive. Purposeful aggression improved the odds of survival
and reproduction.
 Since males who were adept at such behavior may have been more successful in
securing mates and in transmitting their genes to offspring, this may have led to the
development of a genetically influenced tendency for males to aggress against other
males.
 In contrast, males would not be expected to possess a similar tendency to aggress
against females; in fact, development of such tendencies might be discouraged because
females would tend to reject as mates males who are aggressive toward them or even
ones who are aggressive in public, thus exposing themselves and their mates to
unnecessary danger.
 As a result, males may have weaker tendencies to aggress against females than
against other males.
 In contrast, females might aggress equally against males and females, or even more
frequently against males than other females.

12.  Because aggression is a complex behavior, no one spot in the brain controls it.
 But researchers have found brain neural systems in both animals and humans
that facilitate aggression.
 The researches have found some places in brain that is activating hostility, such
as the prefrontal cortex and activation in amygdala.
 Impaired prefrontal processing can disrupt what is called executive functioning,
the cognitive abilities and processes that allow humans to plan or inhibit their
actions.
 Executive functioning enables people to respond to situations in a reasoned,
flexible manner, as opposed to being driven purely by external stimuli (Hoaken et
al., 2007).
 Situational factors can also play a role: Sleep deprivation reduces activity in the
prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for self-control.
 In individuals prone to violence and aggression, poor sleep can lead to violence
and aggression.

13.  Serotonin appears to work like a braking mechanism to restrain impulsive,
reactive acts of aggression. Low level of serotonin leads to high level of aggression.
 Hormonal influences appear to be much stronger in other animals than in
humans. But human aggressiveness does correlate with the male sex hormone
testosterone.
 So, neural, genetic, and biochemical influences predispose some people to react
aggressively to conflict and provocation.

14.  According to the second view, frustration causes anger and hostility. Given
aggressive cues, that anger may provoke aggression. Frustration stems not from
deprivation itself but from the gap between expectations and achievements.
 Contrary to the famous frustration-aggression hypothesis, all aggression does not
stem from frustration, and frustration does not always lead to aggression.
 Frustration is a strong elicitor of aggression only under certain limited conditions.
 The social learning view presents aggression as learned behavior.
 By experience and by observing others’ success, we sometimes learn that
aggression pays.
 Social learning enables family and subcultural influences on aggression, as well as
media influences.

15.  In contrast, provocation from others is a powerful elicitor of aggression. Even mild
teasing can stimulate aggression, although such effects are stronger in certain
cultures than others.
 Heightened arousal can increase aggression if it persists beyond the situation in
which it was induced and is unknowingly interpreted as anger generated in the
new context.
 Exposure to media violence has been found to increase aggression among viewers.
This is due to several factors, such as the priming of aggressive thoughts and a
weakening of restraints against aggression, and also to desensitization to such
materials.
 Playing violent video games increases aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and
overt aggressive behavior. It also reduces empathy toward others and prosocial
behavior.
 Individuals like to play these games not because of the aggressive content but
because the games satisfy motives for competence and mastery.

16.  Personality traits interact with situational factors to influence aggression; only if
the situational factors (e.g. Provocation) are above threshold do these personal
traits enhance aggression. But when the situation is strong and clear (e.g., high
provocation), individual differences are also eliminated.
 People showing the Type A behavior pattern are more irritable and aggressive
than people with the Type B behavior pattern.
 People high in narcissism hold an overinflated view of their own worth. They react
with exceptionally high levels of aggression to feedback that threatens their
inflated egos. They also view themselves, more than other people, as victims of the
transgressions of others, and this may contribute to their heightened aggression.

17. Males are more aggressive overall than
females, but this difference is highly
dependent on the situation and is eliminated
in the context of strong provocation. Males
are more likely to use direct forms of
aggression, but females are more likely to
use indirect forms of aggression.
Both women and men who combine
aggression with relationship-enhancing
skills are very popular, and this, too,
suggests that gender differences in
aggression are smaller and more complex
than was suggested in the past.

18. High temperatures tend to
increase aggression, but only up
to a point. Beyond some level,
aggression declines as
temperatures rise.
Consuming alcohol can increase
aggression in both men and
women, perhaps because this drug
reduces the individual's capacity
to process some kinds of
information.
Alcohol enhances aggressiveness
by reducing people’s self-
awareness, by focusing their
attention on a provocation, and by
people’s mentally associating
alcohol with aggression

19. Smith, E.R., Mackie, D.M., Claypool, H.M.,(2015). Social Psychology (4th Edition).
New
York, Taylor and Francis Publication limited.
Baron, R.A., Branscombe, N.R., (2012). Social Psychology (13th Edition). United
States
of America, Pearson Education Inc.
Myers, D.G., Twenge, J.M., (2016). Social Psychology (12th Edition). New York.
McGraw-Hill Education Private Limited.
Taylor, S.E., Peplau, L.A., Sears, D.O., (2006). Social Psychology (12th Edition). New
Jersey, Pearson Education Inc.
Kassin, S., Fein, S., Markus, H.R., (2014). Social Psychology (9th Edition). India.
Wadsworth Publication Limited.