Week 10 Exam Notes on Aggression and Violence PDF

Week 10 exam notes Aggression and Violence - **Aggression defined:** Any behaviour, physical, verbal or relational, which is intended to harm someone who does not want to be harmed. - **Features of Aggression** 1. Aggressive behaviour is an action you can see 2. Aggression is NOT...

Week 10 exam notes Aggression and Violence - **Aggression defined:** Any behaviour, physical, verbal or relational, which is intended to harm someone who does not want to be harmed. - **Features of Aggression** 1. Aggressive behaviour is an action you can see 2. Aggression is NOT an internal response, not thoughts or feelings 3. Aggression is intentional, not an accident 4. The victims must want to avoid harm 5. Aggression may or may NOT achieve its goal 6. The aim must be to hurt another person intentionally - **Violence defined:** Violence is aggression intended to cause extreme physical harm Cause serious injury Cause death - **Frustration Aggression Theory 1** - The occurrence of aggressive behaviour is always caused by frustration - Frustration always leads to aggression - Frustration is caused when a person is prevented from achieving a goal Limitations & Problems: - It rules out other causes of aggression like being tired, anxious or overwhelmed - Frustration can cause other things other than aggression, such as sadness and depression - **The Reformulated Frustration-Aggression Model 2** - Frustration generates aggressive inclinations only to the extent that it produces negative affect - The model supposes that frustration and other discomforts lead to aggression insofar as they: 1. Elicit Negative Affect 2. Elicit Aggressive Inclinations **These two factors lead to aggressive behaviour** - Frustration does not automatically cause aggression. - Frustration only leads to aggression when it's attached to a negative affect. - Negative affect causes aggressive inclinations but does not guarantee aggression; however, it will increase the inclination to be aggressive. - If the frustration **is unintentional, accidental, or meaningless** like a mistake, the person will not feel a negative effect; this will reduce the chance of aggression. - If you **anticipate** that something will go wrong, or expect it, you don't feel as frustrated. When something goes wrong that you don't expect, you will have more negative effects, which leads to aggressive responses. - When you **believe you are about to reach your goal** but fail at the last minute, you experience greater frustration, negative affect, and aggression. - **Expectation** plays a role: if you understand that you may not reach your goal, you feel less frustrated, less negative affect, and less aggression if you fail. - **Proximity: The closer you are to something you want, but it's taken away at the last minute, the greater the frustration, negative affect, and aggression.** - **Negative Affect can be caused by Many Factors** 1. Frustration 2. Pain 3. Discomfort 4. Heat or Humidity 5. Offensive Odors - **Factors that can influence & contribute to aggression** - **Personalilty** - **Mood** - Gender - Culture - Cognitive biases - Alcohol - Media - **Aggressive Behaviour Is influenced by** 1. **Social norms** 2. **Consequences** can prevent you from being aggressive 3. **Target Attributions:** Men feel aggressive and are more inclined to turn it into aggressive behaviours than women 4. **Victim Attributions:** Gender and age: people are more aggressive against the same sex - **Gender and Aggression** - **Hyde 1984** - 5% of the difference in aggression is due to gender - **Bettencourt & Miller 1986, Bettencourt & Kernhan 1998** - Unprovoked men are more aggressive than unprovoked women - **Knight et al. 2002** - When a man is emotionally aroused, they are more aggressive than women - **Burton et al. 2007** - Men are more physically aggressive - **Scheithauer et al. 2008** - Men are more aggressive than women, but the type of aggression varies - **Bjorkqvist 2018** - Girls use more indirect aggression - Boys use more physical aggression - No difference in verbal aggression - **Gender & Culture and Aggression 2** **Archer and Mcdaniel 1995** - Teenagers in 11 different countries - Read stories of conflict and had to write their own ending - Men in every country showed greater tendency towards violent solutions to conflict than women did - Showed differences in aggression between cultures - Women in Australia and NZ showed higher levels of aggression than men. In Sweden and Korea. - **Culture and Aggression 3** - **Endendiijk et al. 2017 Social Learning Theory** - Looked at implicit stereotypes - Looked the physical behaviour of aggressive parents - Parents use physical control strategies more with sons than daughters - Physical control strategies model aggression to children, leading to children acting aggressive - How parents treat their kids is responsible for gender differences in aggression later in life - Parents create gender stereotypes with how they display aggression Towards sons vs. daughters - If a parent uses physical control on a 3-year-old, they will be more aggressive at 4. - Fathers tend to be more physically controlling with their sons. - Boys are found to be more aggressive than girls, which is caused by parents. - The gender differences we see in adults could be caused by their parents. physically controlling behaviours towards them in childhood - **Culture of Honour** - **Honour Culture definition:** An honour culture is one where a person feels obliged to protect their reputation with insults, fronts and threats of violence towards others. - **Where honour cultures found:** Honour cultures exist In: 1. America, 2. Southern American, 3. Inner-city neighbourhoods 4. middle east 5. Jails 6. Mafia 7. Action Movies **Why do honour cultures develop:** 1. Lack of authority 2. Lack of law enforcement 3. No reliable authority to offer protection to citizons 4. Where people feel they need to protect themselves **Honour Culture:** 1. Respond with disproportional levels of violence over small things 2. Aim to establish themselves as a leader and not someone to be messed with 3. Trying to protect themselves 4. Aimed to deter others from messing with them 5. Related to Masculinity **Culture of Honour Southern USA** **Cohen et al. 1996** - **Proved that culture influences aggression** - Law enforcement in the South was inadequate, corrupt or too far - Culture influences individuals to be self-reliant in the pursuit of justice - To protect them from becoming pushed around or an easy target - A culture of honour develops through group norms that still exist today - Violence used for self-protection or to protect kids is justified - Homicide due to conflicts and arguments is justified **Results found:** - Testosterone increases aggressive responses - Testosterone increase a persons anticipation of aggression - Testosterone is both the cause of aggression and a consequence of aggression - An insult is a more significant threat to a person's honour when its done in front of an audience - Southerners view public insults as negatively impacting their masculinity - Southern men from honour cultures want to prove they are masculine and they will then behaviour more aggressively to do so **Culture of Honour WAR** **Dafeo et al. 2016** Honour cultures increase the risk of war. American presidents born in the south are more likely to engage in war and use force; they are more likely to win. **Culture of Honour and Domestic Violence** **Gul et al. 2021** **Honour cultures have increased:** - intimate partner violence - School violence - Less likely to seek mental health support **Cognitive Biases and Aggression** - **Hostile Attribution Bias** - The tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as hostile. - A consistently high hostile attribution style is linked to aggression. - Develops from early experiences. - Develops from personality styles. - Assumes the worst from others\' actions, feels under threat, and responds with aggression. - May see people laughing and assume they are being laughed at. - Hostile attribution children lead to aggressive adults - Hostile attribution 4 times more likely to die before the age of 50 years old - More likely to have martial conflict and dissatisfaction - Leads to aggressive parenting behaviours - Leads to parents with hard discipline - Leads to aggression **Cognitive Bias and Aggression Puzzle** **Dodge 1980** - Aggressive people tend to interpret ambiguous situations as threats and hostile intentions towards them. **Cognitive Bias and Aggression** **Tuente et al. 2019** - People who display a hostile attribution Bais also display aggression Limitation: The relationship between hostile attribution biases and aggression is only correlational **Alcohol** - Alcohol is purposefully used to encourage aggression - Soldiers are given alcohol before battle to reduce anxiety and increase aggression - Violet crimes are more likely to be committed by drunk people - Participants in experiments respond more violently to provocation when drunk **The Power of Alcohol** - **Alcohol is a disinhibitory,** which makes us less cautious about acting in socially unacceptable ways. - **Alcohol Reduces glucose**, which provides energy to the brain for **self-control.** - **Reduces self-awareness** - According to schema theory, **Alcohol increases aggression because people expect it to** - In our **brains, Alcohol is strongly associated with aggression** **Alcohol Brown et al. 2011** - Society and culture create expectations that alcohol is related to aggression - Measure students reaction times to words of drinks - Exposure to workds of drinks did not impact aggression - Exposure to images of alcohol and being over the age of 14 increased the association between alcohol and aggression - 14 year olds exposed to images of alcohol will act more aggressive they don't even need to consume it **Media and Aggression** **Eron 1982 Media and Aggression Correlation** - Teenagers who recalled watching violent shows as children acted more aggressively as teens **(Liebart & Baron, 1972).** - Children exposed to violent tv behave more aggressively against friends. **(Johnson, 2002)** - After televised boxing matches: - If a black man lost the fight, more black men were murdered in society. - If a white man lost a boxing fight, more white men were murdered. **Numb sensitivity to violent events** - Those who watch more tv show less arousal to violence on tv - Desensitised to violence the more you watch tv **(Thomas et al., 1977)** Watching violence on TV decreases your emotional response and empathy towards violence in real life. **THOMAS (1982): Media violence** Watching aggressive films conditions you to become more aggressive and reactive when provoked. Aggressive films make you feel less arousal, with fear or care before and after you act aggressively towards others. Violent programs desensitisatie people. **Video Game Violence** **Ferguson, C. J., & Rueda, S. M. (2010). The Hitman study: Violent video game exposure** - **The 3 Theories of Video Game Violence** 1. **Social Learning Theory** - Individuals who are exposed to violent media, including video games, will develop aggressive or violent scripts. - Which they may enact in real life - BoBo Doll Study - Existing evidence for this theory is weak; very mixed results. - Concerns research is biased towards certain results. - Publication bias, because it supports what people want to believe. - Studies used poor measures of aggression and violence. - Our study showed no significant difference between any of the conditions - Some evidence suggested from the control group that violent video games may reduce aggression. Which is the opposite of this theory - Found previous experience with violent video games was not related to aggression in the laboratory study - Study said we should stop supporting the idea that violet video games contribute to violence 2. **The Catharsis Hypothesis** - Says: Aggression is a drive that requires release. - Aggression can be released through other sources in a healthy way, such as violent video games.Violent video games let people vent their aggression in less harmful ways - Evidence is mixed: most studies do not test this hypothesis appropriately. They are really measuring other things. - The problem with research is they fail to frustrate the participants before they play the violent game, so they can't tell if it's actually had any effect. This theory was not supported in this study, and there was no significant difference between the four conditions. - The control group was the only group that showed lower aggression, which might suggest that all video games lower aggression. - So, video games should not be suggested as a way for people to manage their feelings healthily, because they may not actually do so. 3. **Mood Management** - Individuals choose media to suit their mood - The goal is to reduce a depressed mood - Dark or violent media may be used to help improve people\'s moods and Reduce hostile feelings. Violent video games may help people cope with stress and depression. - The study showed no decrease in hostile feelings after playing violent video games. - Follow-up research found people with a longer history of playing violent video games were better able to calm themselves down and avoid depression following frustration. **Limitations of the study** A quasi-study measures correlation but can't determine causation. Limited sample size. The test did not really create ample frustration to exhibit aggression.