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AQA A2 Psychology Aggression

Terms in this set (27)

Social psychological theories of aggression : SLT and deindividuation
SLT states that behaviour is learned because of environmental influences rather than by innate or internal forces. Emphasising on the importance of observing and modelling behaviours, attitudes and emotions of others through direct experience or vicarious experience, and that if behaviour is reinforced, it will be repeated. This supports the role of operant conditioning.
In order to learn vicariously (observe) four component processes are involved, they include, attention (paying attention to a models behaviour), retention (code and recall by placing the behavioural information into your LTM), production (possess the correct skills to be able to produce the behaviour accurately) and lastly, reinforcements, which help to motivate us to repeat behaviour. This is made easier if the task is nor too easy or too difficult and if the model is similar to the observer in some way, this could be their age or gender for example. Although a model is needed for imitation, good levels of self efficacy (situation-specific confidence) are also required for both observation and production.
Bandura, Ross and Ross
Carried out a study to test the theory that behaviour is learnt through vicarious experience. Using 36 boys and 36 girls divided into 8 experimental groups of 6 children each, the remainder were the control group. Each child was invited into the experimental room where there were toys for them to play with, shortly after, a model comes in, assembles some toys and then demonstrates aggressive acts towards the bobo doll including verbal aggression and novel behaviour such as hurling the doll to the ground. The children in the experimental condition joined in with the model, whereas 70% of those in the non-experimental or control condition showed zero ratings of aggression. This study seems to lack mundane realism as you would not encounter a situation exactly like this in the real world as if you were to hit a person, they would retaliate which the doll did not.
Support for the bobo doll
Further support is offered from Cumberbatch who found that children who had never played with a bobo doll before were 5x more likely to imitate the aggressive behaviour than those who were familiar with it. The novelty value increases this likelihood further.

Bandura clearly demonstrated that learning can take place through observation and whether or not the behaviour is copied; nevertheless that issue is whether social learning plays a large part in aggressive behaviour. It is clear that it does indeed play some part however Bandura failed to consider other factors such as emotions and personality and so the SLT does not explain why people who are not normally aggressive sometimes behave uncharacteristically aggressive in certain situations.
Deindividuation
Deindividuation is the loss of a sense of individual identity and a loosening of normal inhibitions against engaging in behaviour that is inconsistent with internal standards. It explains how rational individuals become aggressive hooligans in an unruly mob.
Le Bon suggested the more anonymous the crowd, the greater the threat of extreme action as a 'collectivist mindset' takes over and the crowd acts as one. This idea was criticised and instead, that anonymity leads to a release from internal restraints to produce impulsive and irrational behaviour. To this, Zimbardo added that there was more to deindividuation than just anonymity; increased arousal, sensory overload and altered consciousness also play an important part. Social arousal is most noticeable at sporting events in particular where fans become so involved to the point that they are no longer self-aware.
Prentice-Dunn and Rogers
Clarified that there are two types of self-awareness; public and private. In public we are concerned about the impression we present to other people knowing that it will be evaluated, this can be reduced by being part of a crowd where there is a diffusion of responsibility and other members act as role models to the standards of behaviour likely to be copied. On the other hand, private self awareness is the concern individuals have for their own thoughts and feelings, for example, dancing in a crowd can reduce this concern as we become so actively involved in an activity that we 'forget' ourselves as such.
Zimbardo
The most supportive evidence of deindividuation in action is from Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment involving participants taking on the role of either a guard or prisoner, both anonymous in the sense that prisoners were given numbers instead of names and all guards wore military uniforms and sunglasses. The guards stepped up to their roles more so than prisoners, some even enjoyed the power. To add, Malmuth and Check found nearly 1/3 of US male university students would rape if there was no chance of getting caught. Suggesting that deindividuation leads to a lower sense of self-identity and a host of disinhibited antisocial behaviour such as psychological and physical aggression. Resulting in various practical applications, mainly the use of CCTV monitoring 'high risk' areas and denying criminals the comfort of anonymity was most effective at reducing vehicle crimes. Much evidence is focused around the negatives of deindividuation when in real-life people exhibit prosocial behaviour to follow the norms and moral principles in some situations, for example, helping people at the site of a car crash.
Reductionism
Although social psychological theories do not consider the influence of genetics, brain physiology and hormone levels such as testosterone, which could make most explanations appear reductionist, Bandura did acknowledge that biology does in fact play a part, but knowing how and when to be aggressive is learned either directly or indirectly.
Institutional Aggression - within groups
An institution refers to a place of confinement with its own social rules, where behaviour is restricted under the control of specific staff. Institutional aggression is therefore behaviour occurring within an institution such as a prison, by social roles rather than anger or frustration. This can occur in two ways, the first is instrumental aggression where a group shares a common identity and aims, an example of this is the police, they use aggression in a non-emotive manner to achieve goals. Secondly, there is hostile aggression, this emerges from emotional states like anger and frustration. Aggression in a prison can be caused by situational factors or by dispositional factors such as the personality of the individual.
The Importation Model
Irwin and Cressey - Cressey said it was wrong to solely look at 'inmate culture' in isolation, and elements and experiences outside the prison should also be examined, e.g. age, race, gender, alcohol addiction. As younger, non-white inmates are likely to be 'separated' from mainstream society's norms and values which promote pro-social behaviour as a way of solving interpersonal conflict. Irwin and Cressey believed that in a prise there are three types of subcultures; criminal/thief subculture, convict subculture and conventional subculture. To put it briefly, in the criminal/thief subculture, a prisoner follows the trustworthy norms shown by role models, referred to as their 'primary reference group', the convict subculture consists of those raised in prison and now seek positions of power, and the conventional subculture includes one-time offenders that reject the other subcultures whilst associating themselves more with the prison staff.
Supporting study by Mills et al.
and criticisms of this study
Mills et al surveyed 202 inmates newly admitted to a Canadian prison. Using the alcohol dependence scale they found a positive correlate, that higher levels of 'institutional misconduct' were associated with more severe levels of alcohol dependence. Demonstrating how preexisting factor of individuals affect levels of aggression exhibited in prison.
However, this study as well as the Importation Model have both been criticised as being overly deterministic as it offers little room for change, suggesting bad people commit bad acts in prison because of their 'bad' personalities and fails to provide a way of managing and improving aggressive prisoners to reduce prison violence in general.
The Deprivation Model
Sykes, on the other hand, argued that the origins of prison subcultures emanate from within an institution, not from the outside and outlined that there were five deprivations that arise from the indignities of becoming an inmate. These are, the deprivation of liberty through the use of numbers and symbols, the deprivation of autonomy as no power leads to helplessness, deprivation of goods and services makes inmates to feel a sense of failure, the deprivation of heterosexual relationships reduces a mans self-worth, and lastly, deprivation of security. Thus, deprivation leads to increased stress and aggressive behaviour is used to reduce this and obtain resources by gaining control over the social order imposed in prison. This was exhibited in Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment as prisoners rebelled against the conditions and demanded to be released.

These five deprivations and aggressive behaviour could arise sooner and be accentuated by a hot, noisy and overcrowded prison environment and in order to reduce violence these aspects must be controlled. Sparking a politically sensitive issue as those who have committed sever crimes such as murder, should not be given the pleasure of a plush 'home' that most non-criminals do not receive in the real world.
Both models
The Importation Model supports nature to be the cause of institutional violence, where as the Deprivation Model believes nurture is the cause. Once inside the prison the two models appear to overlap so that we are unable to distinguish to what extent nature or nurture have influence on institutional aggression. The case for interaction offers more understanding as violence is viewed as the product of the combination of the aggressors and victims personality and needs, and the situation. It could be that most prisoners are biologically built to be aggressive, and that this is heightened by deprivation but this is not always the case and thus creates a complex theory from which we cannot make a final judgement.
Institutional aggression - between groups
Dehumanisation occurs when the target group are disregarded as human beings and seen and treated like worthless animals. This was present during Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment whereby the guards conformed to their social roles and disregarded the prisoners. Fischer said that this could be controlled by isolating gang members in a specific management unit led to reduced rates of serious assault by 50%.

Milgram looked into obedience with the belief that people are willing to commit heinous acts if they believe that they are being told to do so by a legitimate authority figure. He found this to be true as participants administered electric shocks when forced to by an experimenter even though they felt a sense of wrongdoing and guilt. Mandel rejects his claims as monocausal, suggesting that the main causal factor in the Holocaust was anti-semitism, deeply entrenched in German people at the time which resulted in the elimination of millions of innocent Jews.
Neural and hormonal mechanisms in aggression
Neurotransmitters and hormones are bio mechanisms that play an important role in many areas of human functioning. Serotonin is a hormone and its primary role is to carrying electrical impulses to and from neurones by acting as a chemical carrier to transfer these impulses across the synaptic gap between neurones. Low levels of serotonin have been found to be associated with high levels of testosterone as Delville et al found drugs increasing serotonin production reduced levels of aggressions but then led to an increase in testosterone which resulted in greater levels of aggression. However, this was criticised by Higley who found that those with high levels of testosterone were aggressive but rarely committed aggressive acts therefore suggesting that biological factors are not the only cause of aggression within humans. Thus it is considered to be a biologically reductionist explanation of aggression and other social, behavioural and cognitive factors should too be considered in order to provide a full understanding.
The frontal lobe
The frontal lobe is an area of the brain who's function involves the ability to choose between good and bad actions, the override and suppression of socially unacceptable responses, and the determination of similarities and differences between things or events. Such that damage to this causes irritability, makes people short-tempered and impulsive.
Gur found that women have larger frontal lobes than men and therefore are better able to control emotional responses to stimuli however Kim found that after a stroke men and women both struggled to control their emotions to the same extent even though their brain regions differ.

Despite that, it is almost impossible to isolate damage to a single structure of the brain, as studies on humans tend to be exception case studies such as Phineas Gage and procedures on animals are difficult to generalise to human behaviour as humans are more complex in terms of cognitions and emotions. Thus, leading to an inability to conclusively prove that aggression is caused by localised brain damage.
Genetic factors in aggressive behaviour
Genes determine how much testosterone is produced and how quickly it circulates around the body. Testosterone may affect brain functioning but genes regulate how much is made and how effectively it works. Heritability studies were carried out with focus on the gene MAOA (Monoamine oxidase A) that manufactures enzymes that 'mop up' excess neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. Brunner studied a Dutch family, many male members were aggressive and mildly retarded and had been involved in numerous criminal acts including arson. They were all found the have a defected MAOA gene.
This gene had a greater effect if individuals were abused as children. Whilst genes influence aggression it is not 'aggressive genes' that cause such behaviour but rather that genes trigger a sensitivity to the environment causing a combination of the two to have negative effects.
XYY syndrome
Sandberg first identified the 47 karyotype of which men have an extra Y chromosome and is believed to be linked to increased levels of aggression. Court-Brown samples 314 patients in a high security hospital housing dangerous criminals. 9 of which had XYY syndrome to suggest that all XYY patients should be hospitalised because of their increased risk. Some say this is unethical as isolating people in confinement is not going to change their genes, it is just going to lead to feelings of helplessness which in turn could accentuate and increase the risk of aggressive behaviour being performed. Than if they were to be in the outside world and learn self-control to be able to remove themselves from situations. It also triggers politically sensitive issues, like that of Richard Speck, a man of whom had XYY syndrome and killed 8 student nurses in 1966 was defended because of his biological nature.
Positively, this can also lead to genetic screening to detect the XYY gene so that from early childhood the individual is provided with management of aggression instead of it being manifested and result in heinous behaviour such as murder.
Evolutionary explanations of aggression
The evolutionary approach states that all human behaviour displayed can be traced back to its origins. Any behavioural trait that has been passed on via natural selection must have had an adaptive purpose, in the case of aggression this is the ability to survive in battle to access a mate in order to reproduce successfully. Daly and Wilson claim that men have developed different strategies to deter their female partners from committing adultery, such as snooping through her possessions or even physical abuse. This technique is cited as a major factor in domestic abuse and in the majority of 'battered women' extreme jealousy is cited as the key cause of attacks from male partners (Dobash and Dobash).
These strategies range from vigilance to violence but are all fuelled by male sexual jealousy, an adaptation that evolved specifically to deal with the treat of parental uncertainty. Men can never be certain a child is biologically their's unlike women and are therefore at risk of cuckoldry resulting in a man investing his resources into an offspring that is not biologically his own.
A bit more on women/abuse/cuckoldry
Tailieu and Brownridge found women abused while pregnant were more likely to be carrying another man's child and had suffered direct blows to the abdomen specifically designed to increase the probability of aborting the foetus. However, most studies on focus on male retention strategy and not women even though women sometimes do become violent towards their partner and carry out assaults as often as men do. Felson examined 2060 murders in the US and found that women were twice as likely to murder out of jealously as were men. Although, this study does lack both internal and external validity as no all assaults carried out are reported therefore data collected is largely unrepresentative and thus we are unable to generalise it to the wider population.

In more extreme cases domestic abuse can turn into uxoricide, the death of a wife from physical violence may be an unintended outcome. Shackleford et al found that from 1000 cases of uxoricide, younger women were far more likely to be killed, regardless of the man's age. Although, to criticise, it does not make evolutionary sense to kill a female at her most reproductive time as it will reduce the likelihood of the male achieving reproductive success, which, according to the evolutionary approach is the ultimate aim.
Evolutionary explanations of group display in humans, for example sport and warfare
Social psychological theories such as deindividuation do not tell the whole story about the origins of aggression in group displays. Such group behaviour is triggered by an external stimulus and had been an adaptive response in the past, such as territoriality.
Territorial behaviour is common in many animal species, typically showing threat to outsiders when defending a home territory. This is apparent at sporting events, a well-known example of this is when New Zealand display the 'Haka' before a rugby game to intimidate their opponents. Similarly with football teams Neave and Wolfson found teams playing at home were far more likely to win because of the huge surge of testosterone and crowd support before a match, evolved, to drive them to defend their home territory. In spit of this the relationship with the crowd size is unclear as the advantage has been shown to operate even with very small crowds (Pollard and Pollard). Likewise, it is not known whether the primary effect of crowd displays is to 'psych up' the home team or to distract the away team, all of which suggest that to original adaptive function of such displays may no longer be relevant.
Moore and Brylinsky offer further support, as when the Hartford Hawks basketball team played in front of spectators they scored an average of 64.29 points yet 71.25 without a crowd. Insinuating that crowd displays of support does not always increase team performance at sporting events.
Warfare
Warfare is undoubtedly dangerous and costly therefore it is difficult to see why an organism, selected to survive, should engage in behaviours of such extremes of personal cost and danger. An evolutionary explanation would therefore lead us to expect that any behaviour associated with warfare would have evolved because of its adaptive purpose for the individual to then be passed on to their offspring.
The benefits of this both in the past and now include, access to female mates as males compete with each other in battle to be rewarded with the female they desire. Females find such aggressiveness and bravery attractive which explains why male warriors in traditional societies tend to have a greater number of sexual partners and more children, suggesting it had direct reproductive benefits (Chagnon).
more....
Similarly, displays of aggressiveness and ferocity lead peers to respect respect an individual more and see them as an acquisition within the group during battle. Freeing from the battle would show a person as being cowardly and so all respect from peers would diminish as well as any interest from females. Thus decreasing their reproductive success.
Evolutionary explanations of displays of aggression are based on mating success, status or commitment (such as presenting scars from battle) but fails to explain the level of cruelty mores in humans as opposed to in non-human species. Watson suggests this may be a consequence of deindividuation rather than an evolutionary adaptation.
By displaying battle scars and engaging in aggressive displays demonstrates a sense of loyalty to the group as well as minimising involvement with another group as this 'scares off' opponents and therefore increases their survival as they are less exposed to battle and are so at a decreased risk of injury or death.
IDA
These evolutionary explanations may demonstrate a gender bias as they do not adequately reflect the behaviour of women in the process, they are merely seen only as the males' 'reward'. Women would have considerably less to gain from fighting in near death situations and considerably more to lose, reproductivity, for example. This is fundamental to womens' exclusion from warfare as it intact decreases their fitness but increases that of males and so our understanding of group displays typically found in warfare are therefore limited to the behaviour of men than of women.
Evolutionary explanations of group display in humans - religious and cultural
Sometimes when people are in a group they may act anti-socially or even may become more cooperative. Behaviours that occur when a collection of like-minded people come together, join focus and act together are regarded as group displays. In humans, this could include lynch mobs or self-directed aggression during religious and cultural festivities.
The power-threat hypothesis
Blalock suggests that as a minority group membership grows, majority group members will so intensify their efforts to maintain dominance. Ever since the 18th Century all the way to 1960's black lynchings occurred in the United States as white mobs feared 'negro power' after the abolition of slavery and turned to lynch law as a means of social control. Hyatt argued that through the desecration of the Black body in lynching and other ritual killings, the white mobs had dehumanised victims into bits of bone and dead flesh to a form that was unrecognisable as a human being and acted as an evolved adaptation in response to perceived threats. This is, however, a difficult hypothesis to test as the nature of the social threat is often quite vague. Clark (2006) found a negative correlation between lynchings in Brazil and the number of Afro-Brazilians in the community.
Deindividuation could also account for group behaviours, for example the extreme behaviours of lynch mobs could be explained as individuals losing their individual sense of responsibility and instead adopting the behaviour of the group. In deindividuation, individuals would never behave that way outside of a group setting but in a crowd they often do therefore there is no single theory to account for aggression.
Religious/cultural displays
Ritual processes can often be quite torturous and terrifying, some could even be self-inflicted for example, the Shia Muslim practice during Ashura to commemorate Karbala of Hussain recreate his suffering by hitting themselves with chains or knives upon their foreheads until blood streams down. This contradicts the idea of adaptive strategies being naturally selected, if such displays did represent an adaptive strategy, it must be one that solves a common problem within all societies, this example, is not one.
Irons argues that their were adaptive advantages of group living, individuals gained benefits through cooperation in activities for instance hunting, defence and warfare. Engaging in painful rituals signalled an individuals commitment to the group and a more committed member is likely to be a cooperative one also, natural selection would have favoured their development rather than militated against them. It also ensures that individuals take all the benefits whilst deterring people from joining by ensuring that they are aware of the costs e.g. possible death.
IDA
These explanations do identify how religious displays vary and possess similarities between cultures. You would expect such unethical group displays would be uncommon in Western, developed countries like the United States after having moved on from old 18th century practices and into a time of political stability. Western societies are considered to be more autonomous and strive to achieve personal goals yet during lynchings they exhibited aspects on non-western collectivist cultures as they all formed into one group. The opposite could be said for the personal infliction Muslims display. Nevertheless, whether the display be collectivist or autonomous we still evolved to demonstrate our commitment and control in an aggressive manner.
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