AGGRESSION, CATEGORIES, NATURE OF AGGRESSION

WHAT IS AGGRESSION?

In psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression (also called combativeness) refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause pain or harm. Aggression takes a variety of forms among human beings, and it can be physical, mental, or verbal. Aggression should not be confused with assertiveness.

CATEGORIES

There are two broad categories of aggression. These include hostile, affective, or retaliatory aggression and instrumental, predatory, or goal-oriented aggression. Empirical research indicates that there is a critical difference between the two, both psychologically and physiologically. Some research indicates that people with tendencies toward "affective" aggression, defined in this study as being "impulsive, unplanned, overt, or uncontrolled" have lower IQs than those with tendencies toward "predatory" aggression, defined here as being "goal-oriented, planned, hidden, or controlled".

DEFINITIONS:

“Aggression is physical or verbal behaviour intended to hurt someone”.

“attack: hostile action, especially a physical or military attack, directed against another person or country, often without provocation”.

“hostile attitude or behavior: threatening behavior or actions”.

“A first act of hostility or injury: self-assertiveness, either as a good characteristic or as a sign of emotional instability”.

NATURE OF AGGRESSION

Social psychologists have analyzed three ideas about nature of aggression:

 There is an inborn aggressive drive.

 Aggression is a natural response to frustration. 

 Aggressive behaviour is learned like other social behaviours. 

Inborn aggressive drive: The view that aggressive drive is inborn and thus inevitable was most prominently argued by Sigmund Freud in Vienna and Konrad Lorenz in Germany. Freud, the pioneering psychoanalyst, speculated that human aggression springs from our redirecting toward others the energy of a primitive death urge (which, loosely speaking, he called the death instinct). Lorenz, who studied animal behavior, saw aggression as adaptive rather than self-destructive. But both agreed that aggressive energy is instinctual. If not discharged, it supposedly builds up until it explodes or until an appropriate stimulus “releases” it, like a mouse releasing a mousetrap. 

According to some biologists: aggression is complex behavior, no one spot on the brain controls it. But in both animals and humans, researchers have found complex neural systems that facilitate aggression. When they activate these areas in the inner brain, hostility increases; when they deactivate them, hostility decreases. 

Aggression is a natural response to frustration: It can be recognized that certain circumstances and actions by others seem to make us mad. When we are intentionally hurt, insulted, deceived or made fun of, all these things arouse anger and aggression. Some theorists believe that anger just naturally results from frustration. This is called the frustration-aggression hypothesis. Frustration will be more intense if our goal is highly desirable, if we "get close" to our goal and expect to get it, if the barrier to our goal unexpectedly appears and seems unjustified or unfair, and if we "take things personally". Frustration accompany several physiological reactions, including higher blood pressure and sweating. Psychosomatic symptoms, such as heart disease, occur more often in people who are cynics and distrustful but hold in their anger. Some of us explode, others swallow feelings. Our blood pressure sometimes goes up more when either we explode or swallow the feelings, depending on the situation. The more physiologically damaging anger reactions seem to occur under two extreme conditions, namely, when we feel utterly helpless, or, the opposite, when we have overly optimistic expectations of reaching unreachable goals. 

Aggressive behaviour is learned like other social behaviours: Learned experience is an important determinant of aggressive behavior in humans. Elicitors of aggression such as personal insults, status threats, and the presence of weapons are all learned sources of aggressive behavior. Further, aggressive actions are often followed by rewards and are therefore likely to be repeated. Children learn that aggression can enable them to control resources such as toys and parental attention. Children also learn aggression by observing others behave aggressively. The violent behavior of some teenage gangs provides its younger members with aggressive role models. Children whose parents discipline with physical force tend to use more physical aggression when interacting with others, and parents who abuse their children were typically abused children themselves. The influence of the mass media, especially television, on promoting aggressive behavior is not yet well understood, but a growing body of research evidence indicates that watching violent entertainment is linked to subsequent aggression.

AVERSIVE INCIDENTS THAT INFLUENCE AGGRESSION

Besides frustration, there are three other unpleasant conditions which lead to aggressive behavior. The first unpleasant condition is pain. Attack is yet another form of unpleasant condition and angry.

Pain: Researcher Nathan Azrin with his colleagues undertook a series of studies on the pain-attack reaction. They found that the greater the shock, the more violent the aggression. The researches have also revealed that shocks, intense heat and “psychological pain” induce attack. Such “psychological pain” is, of course, what we call frustration.

Experiments show that in many animal species, aversive stimulation fuels aggression. Further aversive stimulation also increases the likelihood of certain other behaviors, especially escape. Given a choice, many animals prefer to flee rather than fight. However when escape is impossible, the animals prefer to attack. In hind sight, we can see how pain-provoked fight and flight both have survival value, by terminating aversive stimulation. Pain heightens aggressiveness in humans, also. Many of us can recall such a reaction after stubbing a toe or suffering a headache. Aversive stimulation rather than frustration is the basic trigger of hostile aggression. Frustration is certainly one important type of unpleasantness. But any aversive event, whether a dashed expectation, a personal insult, or physical pain, can incite an emotional outburst. Even the torment of a depressed state can increase the likelihood of hostile aggressive behavior.

Heat: People have theorized for centuries about the effect of climate on human action. But, because climate remains steady, while cultural traits change, the climate theory of culture obviously has limited validity. However, temporary climate variations can affect behavior. Offensive odors, smoke, and air pollution have all been linked with aggressive behavior. But the most-studied environmental irritant is heat. For example, compared to students who answered questionnaires in a normal temperature room, those who did so in a hot room (over 90°F) reported feeling more tired and aggressive and expressed more hostility toward a stranger. Does it really mean that heat discomfort directly fuels aggressiveness? Although this conclusion appears plausible, these correlations between temperature and aggression don’t prove it. People certainly could be more irritable in hot, sticky weather. However, there may be other contributing factors. Maybe hot summer evenings lead people into the streets. There, other group influence factors may well take over.

Attacks: Being attacked by another is especially helpful to aggression. Experiments by Harold Dengerink (1977) confirm that intentional attacks breed retaliatory attacks. In most of these experiments one person competes with another in a reaction-time contest. After each test trial, the winner chooses how much shock to give the loser. Actually, each subject is playing a programmed opponent, steadily escalating amount of shock. Extracting “an eye for an eye” is the more likely response. When attacked, subjects usually retaliate in kind.

Crowding: Crowding—the biased feeling of not having enough space—is stressful. Crammed in the back of a bus, trapped in slow-moving freeway traffic, or living three in a small college dorm diminishes one’s sense of control. Might such experiences also heighten aggression? The stress experienced by animals allowed to overpopulate a small environment does produce sharp aggressiveness, along with abnormal sexual behavior and even an inflated death rate. But it is a rather large leap from rats in an enclosure or deer on an island to human beings in a city. Nevertheless, it’s true that dense urban areas do experience higher rates of crime and emotional distress. Even when they don’t suffer higher crime rates, residents of crowded cities may feel more fearful. Toronto’s crime rate is four times higher than Hong Kong’s. Yet people from Hong Kong, which is four times more densely populated than Toronto, report feeling more fearful on their city’s streets than do people from Toronto