Aggression in the real world

Aggression in the real world

1. Institutional aggression

   • USed to describe aggression within institutional environements ie. a prison.
   • The dispositional explanation
     • Argues that institutional aggression stems from the characteristics of the individuals themselves (their deposition) ie. age, gender, experience, their past experiences (gangs etc) and their biology/family's traits.
     • The characteristics and social norms that inmates bring with them in to the prison are the main factors that lead to their institutional aggression. This is the importation model as the inmates have inported characteristics from their outside lives in. ie. they bring the social norms of gangs where aggression is a respectable trait.
     • For - Harer and Steffenmeier - Looked at data from 58 prisons in the US. They found that acts of violent behaviour were significantly higher among the black population, whereas drug offences were significantly higher among the white population. This supports the importation model as these trends mirror the levels seen in American society outside of the prison.
     • Against - Detisa - Challenges the clain that pre-prison gang membership predicts violences whilst in prison. They found that other inmates with prior street gang involvement were no more likely than the other inmates to engage in prison violence.
   • The situational explanation
     • Claims that institutional aggression is caused by the environement in the institutions. ie. guards behaviour, frustration, boredom, lack of sex, loss of control.
     • This is known as the deprivation model as in prison you are deprived of your normal things. It states that prison conditions ie. overcrowding causes stress which results in aggression.
     • For - McCarkle et al - Major study of over 350 prisons (US) found that situational factors ie. overcrowding, loss of privacy and lack of meaningful activity all significantly influenced inmate-on-inmate assaults and inmate-on-staff assaults.
   • Against - Research for both the importation and the deprivation models is cortradictory - they both play a part in intitutional aggression. Jiang and Fisher-Giolando - looked at reports from prisons and concluded that dispositional factors were best suited to explaining inmate-on-inmate violence, whereas situational were best suited to describing violence towards staff.

2. Media violence

   • How does it lead to aggression?
     • Disinhibition - The disinhibiton effect suggests that violent media changes our social norms which can alter our behaviour. This is because their sense of reality is distorted through the aggression appearing justified. Seeing more violence repeatedly in the media may mean it becomes acceptable.
     • Cognitive Pruning - Cues associated with violence in the media ie. guns may trigger aggression in us when we see them in real life. The violent material we see in the media is stored as a memory, connected to other violent memories. We're primed to recieve these memories if we come across anything associated with them, which may prompt aggressive behaviour.
       • Against - May only have an affect is the individual already has a pre-dispostition to certain behaviours due to their personalities.
     • Desensitisation - Under normal conditions, anxiety and violence inhibits the replication of aggression. Through repeated exposure from the media, levels of arousal and anxiety decrease which can lead to more aggressive behaviour.
       • For - Drabman and Thomas - Found children who had watched a violent film compared to children who'd watched an exciting film were slower to ask for help when they saw two confederates hitting each other.
   • It's been suggested that violenct media and video games can lead to aggression. Seeing characters perform violent behaviour and being rewarded for it could encourgae the players to become aggressive due to vicarious reinforcement.
   • Strengths
     • Paik and Comstock - Conducted a meta-anaylsis investigating the impact of media violence on behaviour. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between watching violent television/films and violent behaviour. Men were slightly sronger than women. This suggests there is a correlation between violent behaviour and violent media images.
   • Weaknesses
     • Charlton et al - Studied children in St Helena before and after TV was introduced to the island. They observed children in the school playground before TV and after it. The results shows a slight decrease in anti-social behaviour in the post-television condition.
     • Correlations are not nessecarily causal - Aggressive people may choose to watch violent media rather than the media causing the aggression.