Aggression and anti-social
behavior
Dr Alex Hunt
Clinical Psychologist
Defining aggression
• Behaviour designed to harm another
– Self defence vs unprovoked attack
– Same level of aggression, but motive important
• Any behaviour who’s proximate intention is to
harm another person (Fiske, 2004)
• Behaviour either physical or symbolic performed
with the intention of harm
– Passive aggressive
– Attacking
– Sarcasm
Importance of intention
• Widely different motives for aggressive acts
– Proximate intention – closest and most immediate
– Primary intention – ultimate motive
• Primary motives:
– Revenge, fame, recognition (boxing, school shootings)
– Political and moral (terrorism, religious wars)
– Control, threat, self enhancement (domestic violence)
• Hostile aggression – aim just to harm or hurt someone
(revenge is a dish served cold?)
• Instrumental aggression – means to an end (impulsivity)
Theories of aggression
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Lorenz – Ethological approach
Freud – psychoanalytic approach
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
Aggressive cue theory
Operant conditioning
Social learning theory
Media influence
Lorenz-instinct theory
• Lorenz theory is based on animal studies
• Aggression is instinctive in all species
• Believed it is legitimate to make direct
comparisons between species
• “the fighting instinct in beast and man that is
directed against members of the same species”
• Important in the evolution of the species
• Allows adaption survival – scarce resources,
defend territory
Thoughts?
• Importance of groups, in-groups and outgroups
• Behind genocide?
Freudian theory
• Death instinct – thanatos – an inborn self
destructiveness, aim to reduce or destroy tension
with the aim of achieving a blissful state
• Conflicts with the life instinct, and must therefore
be displaced into others or sublimated into other
activity
• Aggressive energy builds until it needs to be
released in some way
• Megergee (1966) - Brutally aggressive crime often
committed by over controlled individuals…
• "The sombre fact is that we are the cruellest and
most ruthless species that has ever walked the
earth . . . And that although we may recoil in
horror when we read in newspapers and history
books of the atrocities committed by man upon
man, we know in our hearts that each one of us
harbours within himself the same savage
impulses which lead to murder, torture and war…
since he [man] now possesses weapons of
unparalleled destructiveness . . . it is not beyond
possibility that he may yet encompass the total
elimination of homo sapiens.“ (Storr 1968)
Appeasement
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Eye to eye contact
Smiling
Mercy
Technology distance us from these strategies
to reduce violence- missiles , planes,
• De-individuation-NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
• Dollard -Aggression is always as a result of
frustration and contrariwise the presence of
frustration always leads to some form of
aggression
• Agreed with Freud that aggression is an instinct,
he argued that it would be triggered only by
frustrating situations and events.
• Support from the displacement of aggression –
scapegoating, retaliation against an innocent
third party when retaliation against the
provocation is not possible. Kicking the cat
evaluation
• Frustration might be an instigator of aggression, but
situational factors mitigate it; learned inhibition, fear of
retaliation
• Frustration leads to arousal, but aggression might be
one of many responses, whether it occurs depends on
learnt patterns of behavior
• Frustration produces different responses in different
situations. Aggression more likely if
– frustration occurs close to achieving goal
– Frustrating event seen as arbitrary or illegitimate
Importance of attribution
• Cognitive appraisal important
• Attribution theory (weiner 1986) Attributions for
behaviours are made in terms of
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Internal vs. external
Global vs. specific
Stable vs. unstable
Controllable vs. uncontrollable
– Berkowitz – frustrator’s behaviour seen as internal
controllable and improper = aggression more likely
– Mitigating circumstances – changes attribution
Aggressive children
• Chronically aggressive children have been
found to have a hostile attribution bias; see
others as acting against them with hostile
intent, even in ambiguous circumstances
• Aggressive children make rapid attributions
based on only some of relevant information
relating to perceived threat
• Learnt behaviour or more rapid excitatory
response? Or both?
Aggressive Cue Theory (ACT)
• Frustration leads to anger rather than aggression
• Anger only converted to aggression when certain
cues are present
• Cues are environmental stimuli associated with
aggressive behaviour or frustrating object or
person
• Specific features of the situation ‘pull out’ an
aggressive response:
– Environmental cues associated with aggressive
Evaluation of ACT
• Stooge experiment on physiological reactions
to stress.
• Evaluate the other person’s solution to a
written problem with electric shock
• Half Ps given 1 shock (favourable) other half
given 7 shocks (unfavourable)
• See either violent film (Champion with Kirk
Douglas) or non violent film
• Ps then shocked the stooge
Evaluation continued..
• More shocks from those that had received
more shocks,
• more shocks again from those that had
viewed the violent film
• and more again when the stooge’s name
contained either ‘kirk’ or the character ‘kelly’
he played who lost the fight…
• …an instance of successful rewarded
aggression…
Weapons effect…
• More shocks when there are apparently
unrelated weapons present as opposed to sports
gear…
• Reliable effect across situations and societies..
• Guns have an effect in their own right on
promoting aggression, simply by being there:
‘guns not only permit violence, they can stimulate it
as well. The finger pulls the trigger, but the
Social learning theory - Bandura
• Aggressive behavior is learnt through
reinforcement and imitation of aggressive
models-Bandura
• Imitation is reproduction of learning through
observation
• Bobo doll experiment-children observed adult
model with an inflatable doll. After witnessing
violence, more likely to replicate. No violence,
no replication.
Video – bobo dolls
Media and violence
• SLT influenced research into affects of
watching violence and consequently the affect
of watching media with portrayals of violence
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• Violence is perceived as more emotional:
– When realistic settings
– When it is depicted as justified or rewarded
– When viewers identify with the characters
– When pain and suffering are shown graphically
Psychological processes underlying
media exposure
Underlying process
Short term effects
1. Priming of pr-existing cognitions or scripts for behaviour
2. Immediate mimicking of observed behaviour
3. Changes in emotional arousal and the misattribution of
that arousal
Long term effects
1. Observational learning of behavioural scripts, world
schemas and normative beliefs
2. Activation and desensitisation of emotional processes
(emotionally blunting)
3. Didactic learning processes
Factors affecting exposure to media
violence
• Cognitive factors mediate the relationship
between exposure and response.
• How TV violence is perceived and interpreted
is important.
• Some studies in support, others against.
• Again complicated array of factors which come
together to make it more likely, including
personality, situational, family and cultural
factors.
Media violence video
Deindividualisation
• Developed from concept of losing identity in
crowds
• The individual gets lost in the group, they feel
more a part of something bigger and become
more anonymous.
• This can lead to greater antisocial and
aggressive behaviour
• Diener 1976 – trick or treaters
• Zimbado – deindividualisation and prison
experiment. Demand characteristics
Deindividualisation
• Belgian soldiers – those with hoods on
became more self conscious and
individualised. Conversely those who wore
just usual uniforms stayed deindividualised
more likely to be aggressive
• Function of uniforms are to deindividualise
• Prison uniforms; holocaust; effect of
deindividualisation was also to depersonalise
them to allow abuse torture etc.
Family Background
• Norm of family violence
– Siblings
– Domestic violence
– Corporal punishment?