Chapter 13

1. Chapter 13 Aggression

2. Origins of Aggression • Freud suggested that we have an instinct to aggress. • Sociobiologists argue that aggression is an inherited tendency because it promotes reproductive fitness. • Testosterone and serotonin levels are associated with aggression. • Despite evidence of biological underpinnings, social factors greatly influence the expression of aggression.

3. Definition of Aggression • Aggression is any action that is intended to hurt another. • Aggression may be antisocial, sanctioned (e.g., self-defense), or prosocial (e.g., law enforcement) • Aggression is a behavior and should be distinguished from feelings of anger

4. Sources of Anger • Attack • Frustration • = interference with goal attainment • includes family conflicts, job and money problems, even high temperatures

5. Aggressive Behavior • Learning to Be Aggressive • A main mechanism that determines aggression is past learning. • As with other learned behaviors, aggression is influenced by both imitation and reinforcement.

6. Aggressive Behavior • Bandura et al. (1961) studied aggressive behavior. • Children watched an adult play quietly with Tinkertoys and either play aggressively with a Bobo doll or ignore the Bobo doll. • Children who saw the model play aggressively with Bobo were subsequently more aggressive when they were left in a playroom with a Bobo. • More so when the model was rewarded, the same sex as the child, or had a nurturing relationship with the child.

7. Aggressive Behavior • Reinforcement is a major facilitator of aggression. • Parents provide both reinforcement and a model. • Children whose parents punish them for fighting tend to be less aggressive at home but more aggressive away.

8. Aggressive Behavior • For an attack or frustration to produce anger and aggression, it must be perceived as intended to harm. • Attributions of controllability affect this assessment.

9. Aggressive Behavior • People who are chronically aggressive have a strong attributional bias to perceive others as acting against them with hostile intent, especially in ambiguous situations.

10. Aggressive Behavior • Graham et al (1992) developed an effective 12-session program that trained aggressive youths to infer non-hostile intent following ambiguous peer provocation. • E.g., ask them to consider how easy it is for a ball thrown by a peer to hit someone in the head accidentally.

11. Aggressive Behavior • Reinforcement, imitation, and assumptions about others’ motives may all combine to produce a schema for aggression. • Once these schemas are in place, aggressive behaviors can be self-perpetuating.

12. Aggressive Behavior • The general affective aggression model suggests that factors increasing aggression do so by increasing the accessibility of aggressive thoughts.

13. Aggressive Behavior • Social Norms are crucial in determining what aggressive habits are learned.

14. Aggressive Behavior • Instrumental Aggression occurs when a person uses aggression to obtain a practical goal by hurting others, even when he or she is not angry.

15. Aggressive Behavior • Deindividuation may produce contagious violence in crowd situations. • Factors that influence this include anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, group size, arousal due to noise and fatigue, and novel, unstructured situations.

16. Aggressive Behavior • When people are motivated to aggress against another, they may dehumanize that person.

17. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • Punishment and Retaliation • Learned Inhibitions • Distraction • Aggression Anxiety • Pain Cues • Alcohol and Drugs • Displaced Aggression • Catharsis • Teens and Violence • Reducing Aggressive Behavior: A Comment

18. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • Aggressive behavior is a major problem for the human species. • All societies expend much energy trying to control tendencies towards violence. • Every solution has its own risks and unintended consequences.

19. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • Fear of punishment or retaliation reduce aggression only in the immediate situation. • Generate anger • Spark counter-aggression • Even if they worked, this is too expensive to be a wide-spread solution

20. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • Trying to reduce frustration is also ineffective. • Government responses to try to reduce large-scale economic frustrations are sometimes effective, sometimes not. • However, such programs can never eliminate frustration, so other techniques for reducing aggression are necessary.

21. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • One way to reduce aggression is for people to learn to control their own aggressive urges. • Distraction is one way to cope with anger; it may or may not succeed. • Aggression anxiety is the anxiety people feel when they are about to commit an aggressive act. • Women, children from middle-class homes, and children whose parents use reasoning and withdrawal of affection (rather than physical aggression) as disciplinary techniques are higher in this anxiety.

22. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • Pain cues from the victim reduce aggression unless the aggressor is extremely angry to begin with; then they can increase aggression.

23. Reducing Aggressive Behavior • Alcohol and some other drugs (PCP, methamphetamines, crack cocaine) may increase violence by reducing inhibitions against it. • People who are intoxicated attend less to the consequences of their behavior. • Alcohol also heightens people’s response to social pressures to aggress.

24. Displaced Aggression • When aggressive feelings cannot be expressed against the cause of the anger, we may engage in displaced aggression against a substitute target. • The more similar a target is to the original source, the stronger the aggressive impulse, but also the greater the anxiety that is felt about aggressing. Thus displaced aggression is most likely to be directed towards targets that are weaker & less dangerous.

25. Catharsis • Catharsis refers to Freud’s idea that the release of anger would reduce subsequent aggression. • Catharsis may reduce subsequent aggression when an angry person expresses that anger directly towards the person who frustrated them. • But under many conditions, catharsis may actually increase aggression

26. Teens and Violence • High rates of teen violence • Every day, 5000 teachers are threatened and 200 actually attacked. • Which teens kill? • More likely if child comes from a violent family, has a history of abuse, belongs to a gang, abuses drugs or alcohol, has access to weapons, has problems at school, has a neurological disorder.

27. Teens and Violence • Most school shootings have occurred in rural or suburban, not urban, settings. • Most perpetrators are young white males with a history of social problems.

28. Teens and Violence • Aronson’s “jigsaw classroom” technique may decrease school violence as well as reduce prejudice. • Students are divided into small groups to work on projects in such a way that they are interdependent on each other for success. • Techniques that build stronger ties between the school and the community also are modestly successful in reducing school violence.

29. Media Violence • Does watching violent programming have an effect on aggressive behavior? • Theories that suggest it could include • Learning theory (observation; reinforcement too since much media aggression is rewarded) • Cognitive theories (children could learn aggressive scripts and be over-quick to respond aggressively to minor insults; especially those with a predisposition to aggression)

30. Media Violence • What does research actually find about the effects of media violence?

31. Media Violence • Laboratory Experiments • Laboratory studies generally find that observing televised aggression increases aggressive behavior • Recent studies suggest that the causal mechanism may be that TV violence primes aggression-related material in memory

32. Media Violence • A problem with laboratory studies is that they may be low in external validity. • Exposure to conditions is brief and controlled • Little opportunity is provided for alternative responses such as distraction • Aggression may be measured in ways that encourage its expression • However, the lab studies and real-world studies agree on the conditions under which aggression occurs: more so after provocation, alcohol consumption, anonymity; men more than women

33. Media Violence • Correlational research on media violence focuses on longitudinal studies asking whether those children who watch more violent TV are more aggressive as adults. • Overall results show a modest positive correlation • But as with correlational research in general, there are alternative explanations • Children who watch more TV in general more violent? • Personality characteristics as a “third variable”?

34. Media Violence • Field Experiments answer criticisms by using experimental methods in real-world settings. • Most studies have found mixed results. • In real-life situations, observed violence seems to have fairly weak effects on aggressive behavior.

35. Media Violence • Recent studies have begun to examine the effects of violence in video games • Anderson & Dill (2000) found that violent video games increase aggressive thoughts & behavior in the lab and are related to delinquency in the real world • More so for males and for people with a prior history of aggression

36. Media Violence • Conclusions on Media Violence • Media violence is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce aggressive behavior • Aggressive behavior is multiply determined. By itself, media violence is unlikely to foster aggression. • However, media violence may contribute to aggressive acts in some individuals

37. Media Violence • Does watching pornography promote sexual violence? • Research that examines this makes a distinction between violent and nonviolent erotica. • One hypothesis is that violent erotica may trigger aggression against women.

38. Media Violence • Donnerstein & Berkowitz (1981) showed men one of four types of films. Men were either angered by a female or not, and then had an opportunity to shock her. Results are at left.

39. Media Violence • The results of the Donnerstein & Berkowitz study show that the violent erotic film that showed a woman enjoying the violence provoked aggression against a woman even by men who were not angry at her. • For angry men, seeing any violent erotic film (but not a nonviolent erotic film), provoked aggression.

40. Media Violence • Exposure to violent erotica may contribute to desensitization of men to violence towards women and foster more accepting attitudes to such violence

41. Media Violence • However, note that there are problems with the external validity of such research • Demand characteristics in the lab situation may increase aggression because the purpose of the study seems obvious • Separated post-test research shows lesser effects

42. Intimate Violence • Domestic Violence is violence committed by one family member against another • Most common: parents abusing children, husbands abusing wives • There are huge personal and social costs to this abuse • Police are more reluctant to intervene in family violence than stranger violence • Why do women remain? Economic dependence, few options for escape or alternatives

43. Intimate Violence • A man’s need to control or dominate women and an inability to empathize with others may make violence more likely.

44. Intimate Violence • Rape is forced sexual activity without the partner’s consent. • It is a crime of aggression and power, involving a male need for control & domination • ~20% of women in the U.S. have been raped, often when under age 18, and usually by someone they know, often by a relative or boyfriend (current or former)

45. Intimate Violence • Rape Myths may contribute to the high rates of rape • E.g.,“Women ask for it” • One important myth is the idea that only disturbed men rape. • However, about half of male college students said they would force a woman to have sex against her will if they could get away with it.

46. Intimate Violence • Men and women have different perceptions of rape. • Muehlenhard (1988) had students evaluate scenarios. Men were more likely to overestimate the woman’s interest in sex and rated the use of force as more justifiable than women did.

47. Intimate Violence • Men hold more rape myths than women. • Men who hold rape myths tolerate more violence in general, hold more conservative sex-role stereotypes, & exhibit hostility towards women • Rape myths create a cultural climate that is tolerant of rape

48. Intimate Violence • Why Do Men Rape? • Hostile childhood experiences • Believing rape myths • Anger towards women • Need for dominance over women • Sex & aggression are linked in the minds of some men • Peer influence

49. Intimate Violence • Adjustment to Rape • Victims are often blamed, and may blame themselves • Neither self-blame nor societal blame fosters good adjustment • There are long-lasting physical & psychological consequences • STDs, pregnancies; fear, anxiety, depression • Current legal system structure may make things worse & foster decreased reporting

50. Intimate Violence • Sexual Harassment includes many aggressive behaviors: unwelcome sexual advances, verbal & physical conduct of a sexual nature that creates a hostile and intimidating work environment • Widespread problem in the workplace • Creates profound job, psychological, and health consequences for those who experience it