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Human Aggression and Violence

CHAPTER 5

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Aggression

  • The basic ingredient in violent crime
  • Is human aggression instinctive, biological, learned, or some combination of these characteristics?
  • The methods designed to control, reduce, or eliminate aggressive behavior will differ depending on perspective

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How is Aggression Defined?

  • Difficult to define
  • Which concepts and behaviors to include and exclude
  • Passive-aggressive behavior
  • Intention is aggressive, behavior is passive and indirect
  • Irrelevant to study of crime, since doesn’t often manifest directly in violent or antisocial behavior

Buss’s Varieties of Aggression

Active Passive
Direct Indirect Direct Indirect
Physical Punching/ Hitting Practical joke, booby trap Obstructingpassage Refusing to perform necessary task
Verbal Insulting victim Malicious gossip Refusing to speak Refusing consent

Two Types of Aggression

  • Hostile Aggression
  • Expressive
  • Instrumental Aggression

Two Types of Aggression
Hostile Aggression

  • Intense and disorganizing emotion of anger in response to anger-inducing conditions
  • The aggressor’s goal is to make a victim suffer
  • Most criminal homicides, rapes, and other violent crimes directed at harming the victim

Two Types of Aggression
Instrumental Aggression

  • The desire for some object or status possessed by another person
  • Robbery, burglary, larceny, and various white-collar crimes
  • No intent to harm unless one interferes with objective

Definition of Aggression

  • Behavior perpetrated or attempted with the intention of harming another individual physically or psychologically, or to destroy an object
  • Behavior may not necessarily qualify as criminal

Definition of Violence

  • Destructive physical aggression intentionally directed at harming other persons or objects
  • May be methodical or random, sustained or fleeting, intensive or uncontrolled

Theoretical Perspectives of Aggression

  • Psychodynamic
  • Ethological
  • Evolutionary psychology
  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis
  • Social Learning
  • Excitation theory
  • Displaced aggression theory
  • Cognitive models

Theoretical Perspectives of Aggression
Psychodynamic

  • Humans susceptible to aggressive energy from birth
  • Hydraulic model » Aggressive energy must be drained off or will build up to dangerous levels
  • In order to control violence, individuals must be provided with multiple but appropriate channels for catharsis

Theoretical Perspectives of Aggression
Ethological

  • Inherited instinct of both humans and animals to defend territory that ensures sufficient food, water, space and reproduction
  • Territoriality
  • Ritualized Aggression
  • Evolved into evolutionary psychology

Theoretical Perspectives of Aggression
Evolutionary Psychology

  • The evolution of behavior using the principles of natural selection
  • Aggression normal, not pathological
  • Researchers have found little evidence to support perspective

Theoretical Perspectives of Aggression
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

  • Individuals who are frustrated, thwarted, annoyed, or threatened will behave aggressively
  • Berkowitz » Frustration increases probability of aggression
  • Weapons effect

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

Goal

Aggression

No aggression

  • Interpretation
  • Learning history
  • Aggression-

eliciting stimuli

Frustration

Anger

Other Theoretical Perspectives of Aggression

  • Cognitive-neoassociation model
  • Berkowitz emphasis on cognitive factors
  • Excitation transfer theory
  • Physiological arousal dissipates over time
  • Displaced aggression theory
  • The individual can not aggress against source of provocation but able to be aggressive toward innocent target

Road Rage

  • An incident in which an angry, impatient, or aroused motorist intentionally injures or kills, or tries to injure or kill, another motorist, passenger, or pedestrian, in response to a traffic dispute, altercation, or grievance
  • Provocation may be real or imagined

Aggressive Driving

  • The result of a motorist becoming impatient or frustrated
  • Often not the direct result of the behavior of another motorist
  • Usually considered less serious than road rage

Who are the Road Ragers?

  • Young males, ages 18–35
  • Criminal and violent histories
  • Psychiatric problems
  • Drug or alcohol problems

Social Learning Theory

  • A child has many opportunities to observe aggression, is reinforced for his or her own aggression, or is the object of aggression
  • Biological structures can set limits on the types of aggressive responses that can be learned, this influences the rate at which learning progresses

Social Learning Factors
Modeling

  • Bobo doll experiment
  • Three major types of models (Bandura):
  • Family members
  • Members of one’s subculture
  • Symbolic models provided by the mass media
  • Observation modeling

Cognitive Models of Aggression
Cognitive Scripts

  • Learned and memorized through daily experiences, direct or observed
  • Unique to each person, but once established it becomes resistant to change and may persist into adulthood
  • Must be rehearsed
  • Easily retrieved and utilized when the individual faces a problem

Cognitive Models of Aggression
Hostile Attribution Bias

  • The tendency to interpret ambiguous actions as hostile and threatening
  • Develops in pre-school and remains stable throughout adulthood
  • Childhood exposure to abuse and maltreatment
  • An attempt to control and dominate environment
  • Exists along a continuum

Two Types of Aggression

Overt Aggression

  • Direct confrontation
  • Decreases with age
  • Anger, high arousal
  • Lack of social cognitions
  • Begins early

Covert Aggression

  • Sly, underhanded
  • Increases with age
  • Less emotion
  • Reliance on cognitive capabilities
  • May evolves as well-learned strategy to escape punishment

Two Forms of Aggression

Reactive Aggression

  • A hostile act displayed in response to a perceived threat or provocation
  • Lack of control
  • Anger expressions, temper tantrums, and vengeful hostility

Proactive Aggression

  • Less emotional
  • Driven by expectations of rewards
  • Bullying, domination, teasing, name-calling

Gender Differences in Aggression

  • Males and females equally physically aggressive as toddlers
  • Boys more overtly aggressive in elementary school
  • Girls more covert
  • Relational aggression
  • Cultural and socialization processes promote different kinds of aggression

Media and Violence

  • The research community is sharply divided on the long-term effects of violent media on aggressive behavior

Media and Violence
Television and Movies

  • Research suggests that portrayals of violence on television and movies may have a significant effect on the frequency and type of aggressive and violent behavior expressed by America’s youth

Media and Violence
Contagion Effect

  • Copycat effect
  • Tendency in some people to model or copy an activity portrayed in the entertainment or news media
  • Teen suicide
  • School shootings

Media and Violence
Video Games

  • Violent video games may be one risk factor, and when coupled with other risk factors, may contribute to antisocial or even violent behavior
  • It is unlikely that video games directly contribute to adulthood homicide and excessive aggression

Chapter 5
Key Concepts

  • Aggressive driving
  • Cognitive-neoassociation model
  • Cognitive scripts model
  • Contagion effect (copycat effect)
  • Cybercrime
  • Difference-in-degree
  • Displaced aggression theory
  • Evolutionary psychology
  • Excitation transfer theory
  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis
  • Hostile aggression
  • Hostile attribution bias

Chapter 5
Key Concepts

  • Hostile attribution model
  • Instrumental aggression
  • Passive-aggressive behaviors
  • Proactive aggression
  • Psychodynamic model (hydraulic model)
  • Reactive aggression
  • Ritualized aggression
  • Road rage
  • Rumination
  • Territoriality
  • Theory
  • Weapons effect