Aggression

Aggression

1. Media influences

   • Desensitisation - continuous exposure desensitises flight or flight response so no longer adaptive
   • Disinhibition - loose moral restraints when exposed to violence due to percieved wrong doing
     • Operant condition in video games - people are rewarded for intitating violence
   • Cognitive priming - children see 8,000 murders on TV - script is influences by media and computer games, an aggressive schema is made
   • found men who listened to aggressive music were more aggressive - gave people more chili
   • Real life application - video gaes used in army to densensitse people to violence

2. Neural explanations

   • Limbic system linked to aggression
     • cingulate gyrus, septal area, hypothalmaus, formi, amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus
   • Testosterone linked with males, aggression linked with males
     • Giammanco founds castrated animals were less anxious
     • mixed evidence, more than one hormone at play - cortisol too
     • mixed evidence - dual hormone hypothesis with cortisol
   • Serotonin, inhibitory, behaviour control
     • Virkunnen - violent impulsives had lower levels of serotonin
   • Orbitofrontal cortex linked with aggression: more than one structure at play

3. Genes

   • MAOA: gene prducing protein - monoamine oxidase - metabolising noadrenaline, seortonin and DA, adrenaline linked to aggression
   • Agression works with Y chromosome so males with XYY were supermales
     • Theillgaard - only thing different was above average height
   • Concordance rates - found MZ twins had 50% similarity in aggression
   • Selective breeding found links to aggression and inheritance
   • Bruner - violent males had MAOA abnormlaity
   • Stuart - 97 abusive males had faulty MAOA gene

4. Ethological Explanation

   • Innate behaviour maybe beneficial
   • Aggression ritualistic to escape harm
   • innate human and animal behaviours eg Lorenz and geese
   • IRM - Innate Releasing Mechanism inbuilt structure/process
     • Leads to FAP - fixed action pattern, behavioural sequence
       • FAP not always fixed due to characteristics
   • Findings between South and North American men saw different rates of aggression - not innate due to variation
   • Not all aggression is ritualistic - chimpanzee war killed others - not adpative
   • Shickleberg - red spot on fish is IRM - competition to be fought

5. Evolutionary Explanation

   • adaptive to human ancestors - reaction of history due to environment of evolutionary period (EEA) to survive
   • Natural selection
   • Jelaousy is adaptive from adultery and cuckoldry
     • Explains male aggression due to woman's usefulness
     • Daly & Wilson - mate retention strategies: agressive guarding - restricting freedom Intersexual negative reducements - threat of violence
   • Shackleford found correlation between MRS and violence
     • Self report studies - social desirability and unreliable

6. Frustration Aggression Hypothesis

   • Frustration always precedes aggression, aggression always follows frustration
     • Bushman - venting doesnt decrease aggression
   • can be violent fantasy or outburst or physical
   • Not always direct - if unable to direct it's deflected on an alternative
   • Environmental cues - cues are needed for anger to become aggression
   • Berkowitz & LePage: shocks were higher in presence of guns - weapon focus
   • Glenn: jigsaw, frustation measures, aggression higher when insulted in comparison to other variables

7. Social Learning Theory

   • Learned through reinforcement
   • cognitive factors - attention, retention, reproduction, motivation and self efficiacy
   • Aggression imitated by parents
   • Bandura bobo doll, high reliability, controlled but low external vlaidity, lab experiement
   • cultural bias - some cultures don't encourage aggression

8. Deindividuation

   • aggression bigger in groups
     • Explains prison violence
   • Lab experiments, more aggressive the more hidden they were.
   • lack of responsibility increases antisociability - demand characteristics
   • 35% of men would commit rape if they weren't likely to be caught

9. Insititutional explanations

   • Dispositonal - importing trains into aggressive situation (Irwin and Cressey)
     • normalised violence explaining aggression in any position
   • Situational: aggression due to environment
     • Deprived of freedom, choices, heterosexual relationships and security in jail, explaining aggression
   • Overcrowding causes violence
     • McCorkle found no link
   • SPanish/Blacks more likely to be violent in prison due to deprivation
     • No link was found.
   • young more violent due to appropriateness of conflict