1. Human Aggression
PSY 321
Sanchez

2. “In all of nature, there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.” Lewis Thomas, 1981

3. Today’s Agenda: DEFINITIONS CAUSES AND DETERMINANTS OF AGGRESSION
SPECIAL CASE: MEDIA VIOLENCE
REDUCING AGGRESSION

4. Aggression
Aggression -- Intentional action aimed at doing harm or causing harm

5. Aggression
Aggression -- Intentional action aimed at doing harm or causing harm
Aggression?
Injuring someone accidentally?
Swinging a stick at someone but missing?
Insulting someone?
Deliberately failing to prevent harm?

6. Types of Aggression: Instrumental
Instrumental aggression
Harm inflicted as a means to some goal other than causing pain
Goals include:
Personal gain
Attention
Self-defense

7. Types of Aggression: Instrumental Aggression
Immediate conditions
Opportunity for gain with high reward and low perceived risk
Long term conditions
Poverty or other challenging economic factors
Perceive crime as primary means to resources/respect
Norms foster aggression as way to achieve resources
Opportunity
Rewards/Costs
Aggression as means

8. Types of Aggression: Emotional
Emotional aggression
Harm inflicted for its own sake, to cause pain
Often impulsive
But can be calm, calculating

9. Types of Aggression: Emotional Aggression
Immediate conditions
Threat to self-esteem, status, or respect, particularly in public situations
Aggression to save face
Long term conditions
Repeated threats to self-worth or status
Threat to self
Anger
Aggression as an end

10. Emotional Aggression: A Case Study (Katherine Newman, 2004)
School shootings
Commonalities:
Perpetrators had low social status, respect, and self-esteem
Communities were small, tight-knit, and isolated
Associated masculinity = violence
The small-town social structure prevented people from heeding the warning signs

11. Distinguishing Emotional from Instrumental Aggression
Example: Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield’s ear
Instrumental?
Emotional?
Maybe both mechanisms are operating in most cases
Can think of any purely emotional aggression example?

12. The United States: How aggressive are we?
The Violent Nature of American Society
46,121 Americans killed in the Vietnam War
84,644 Americans shot to death in America
Homicide-by-gun rate in America
35 times higher than Germany, Denmark, or England, 7 times higher than Canada or France

13. Table 11.1: The Violent Crime Clock

14. Gender Differences
Universal finding that men are more violent than women.
Differences stable over time and place.
However….type of aggression matters

15. Gender & Aggression Intent to Harm
What ways can we inflict harm on others other than physical violence?
Direct aggression: Verbal or physical aggression
Indirect aggression: Inflicting harm in covert (nonphysical) ways
Relational aggression

16. Gender and Indirect/Direct Aggression

17. Why Are People So Aggressive?
Instinct theories
Freud
Psychoanalytic theory
Death instinct vs. life instinct
Aggression – death instinct is turned outward at others
Evolutionary theories
Darwin
Genetic survival
Genetic selection for aggression
Freud
Darwin

18. Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
“Modeling”
Learn how to behave prosocially
Learn how to behave aggressively

19. Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
“Bobo” doll study
½ kids watched adult beat up doll
½ kids not exposed to the behavior
Kids allowed to play with doll
Results??

20. Social learning clip 19 (Bobo doll)

21. Why Are People So Aggressive?
Evolutionary theories
Social learning theory
a better question may be …
When do people aggress?
Under what conditions are people likely to aggress?
What situational factors cause people to aggress?

22. When Are People Aggressive?
Situational Factors
Frustration-Aggression theory -- frustration always leads to aggression
Study
Young children in room with toys
½ can’t play with toys, then allowed to play
½ can play with toys
Results: frustrated kids destroyed the toys

23. When Are People Aggressive?
Situational Factors
Frustration-aggression theory
Closeness of goal as a factor of frustration-aggression link
Study
Confederate cut in line in front of people
½ time cut in front of 2nd person in line
½ time cut in front of 12th person in line
Results: people standing behind intruder more aggressive when confederate cut 2nd person in line (closer to their goal)

24. When Are People Aggressive?
Situational Factors
Frustration-Aggression theory
Aggression increases when frustration is unexpected
Study
Students hired to call strangers for donations
Students worked on a commission
½ students expected a high rate of contributions
½ students expected far less success
Experiment rigged so donors did not donate
Results: callers with high expectations were more verbally aggressive toward the non-donors

25. When Are People Aggressive?
Situational Factors
Displaced aggression
Aggression not directed at source of the frustration, but at a different, lower status target
Remember Dollard et al. (1939): as cotton prices went down (i.e., less income), lynchings increased

26. When Are People Aggressive?
Berkowitz’s modification of frustration-aggression theory
frustration leads to anger
anger with an aggressive cue leads to aggression
aggressive cue: object associated with aggressive responses (e.g., a gun)

27. When Are People Aggressive?
Berkowitz’s modification of frustration-aggression
Induced Ps to feel angry
Left in a room with gun (violent) or racket (neutral)
Ps allowed to administer “shocks” to other P
Ps gave more shocks to other when gun present

28. When Are People Aggressive?
Alcohol myopia (Steele & Josephs, 1990)
Intoxication facilitates aggression by impairing cognitive processing, narrows attention
Results is more extreme, less moderated behavior
Aggressive response: often powerful and simple
Inhibiting response: often weaker and more complex

29. Heat More violent crimes (rape, murder, riots, assaults)
In summer months
In hot years
In hot cities
Heat increases
Hit by pitch incidents
Horn-honking
Interpret ambiguous event in hostile terms

30. Summary: People are more aggressive when they are…
Frustrated
Angry
Exposed to aggressive cues
Drunk
Hot

31. Special Case: Media Violence
Does violence in the media make people more aggressive?
Statistics
TV is on 28 hrs/wk for preteens and 23 hrs/wk for teens
Prime shows average 5 or 6 acts of violence per hour
Sat morning kids’ programs average per hour
Most violent TV appears before school and after school

32. Special Case: Media Violence
Does violence in the media make people more aggressive?
Conflicting opinions:
Catharsis Hypothesis
Watching violence purges aggressive tendencies
vs. Social learning
Watching violence increases aggressive tendencies
Correlational and Experimental Evidence

33. Special Case: Media Violence
Procedure (Liebert & Baron, 1972)
½ children exposed to an extremely violent show
½ children exposed to nonviolent sporting event
Each child allowed to play in another room with a group of children
Observed aggression/violence in children’s playing

34. DV: Average duration of aggressive responses
Television show

35. Effects of Other Violent Media
Video Games
8 to 13-year-old boys in U.S. average 7.5 hours of video games per week
15% of male entering college students play at least 6 hours/week

36. America’s Army “

37. Source: The Washington Post 8/24/02, p. A1
“It’s awesome,” says James Parker, 27, a Washington computer network administrator.
“You can carjack any car, go to the seedy part of town, beep the horn and pick up a prostitute. Then you take her to a dark street and the car starts shaking. When the prostitute jumps out, your money is down but your energy is full”
Note: People can recover their money by killing the woman.
Source: The Washington Post 8/24/02, p. A1

38. What does the research say?
Anderson & Dill, 2000 Study 1
examined correlation between amount of time playing violent video games and aggressive delinquent behavior
r = .46!! (quite high)

39. Anderson & Dill Study 2: Experiment
College students randomly assigned to play a video game 3 times over a week
Wolfenstein 3D: violent game
Myst: nonviolent game
DV: Level/duration of noise blast given to opponent after losing a game in the lab

40. Results of Study 2

41. Recent Meta-Analysis (Anderson & Bushman, 2001)
Dr. Bushman
Recent Meta-Analysis (Anderson & Bushman, 2001)
Reviewed 54 studies with 4,200 participants
Playing violent video games resulted in
Increased aggression
Decreased helping
Increased aggressive thoughts
Increased anger
Increased arousal
Same effects for males and females, children and adults

42. How does violent media cause aggression?
Short-term effects
Primes aggressive cognitions
Increases arousal
Increases anger
Long-term effects
Teaches people how to aggress
People develop aggressive schemas
They become desensitized to violence

43. How Can Aggression Be Reduced?
Catharsis: Doesn’t work
Punishment: Not a simple solution
Deterrence Theory: Punishment has to be severe, certain, and swift
Corporal punishment increases aggression (Eron et al., 1991; Straus et al., 1997; Gershoff, 2002)
Remove Cues to Aggression (Berkowitz)
Provide Better Role Models (Bandura)