AGGRESSION

Definition

Aggression is defined as behavior aimed at causing harm or pain, psychological harm, or personal injury or physical distraction. An important aspect of aggressive behavior is the intention underlying the actor's behavior. Not all behaviors resulting in harm are considered aggression. For example, a doctor who makes an injection that harms people, but who did so with the intent of preventing the further spread of illness, is not considered to have committed an aggressive act.

Aggression can be direct or indirect, active or passive, and physical or verbal. Using these categories, human aggression can be grouped into eight classes of behavior:

• Punching the victim (direct, active, physical)
• Insulting the victim (direct, active, verbal)
• Performing a practical joke, setting a booby trap (direct, passive, physical)
• Spreading malicious gossip (direct, passive, verbal)
• Obstructing passage, participating in a sit-in (indirect, active, physical)
• Refusing to speak (indirect, active, verbal)
• Refusing to perform a necessary task (indirect, passive, physical)

Direct aggression, especially physically active aggression, is more common among animals. Actors who express indirect aggression usually feel less satisfaction, but they are also less concerned about retaliation. Passive and indirect aggression is the least noxious form. Subordinates rebelling against authority figures often use it. In the family relation it is often used by children against their parents.

The Role of Biological Factors

Some theorists argue that the foundations of aggression are biological. Biological factors that influence aggressive behavior include hormones, physiological illness, and temperament.

Hormones play some indirect role in human aggression. Interaction with external stimuli may affect the threshold of aggressive behavior. Some researchers have concluded that high testosterone levels could be a result of aggressive behavior. In women, premenstrual tension syndrome is associated with a number of aggressive behaviors, such as violent crime.

People with a serious physiological illness, such as cancer, may be affected by negative mood states. These mood states may indirectly affect the aggressive behavior of individuals.

Temperament may be indirectly related to aggressive behavior. People who are impulsive are more likely to be aggressive than people who have a deliberate temperament.

Relationship to Rearing Practices

Although human aggression may have an instinctual component, aggression is modifiable by environmental factors, such as child-rearing practices and parental characteristics.

Aggressive children often develop in families with a low degree of positive interactions and a high degree of punitive reciprocity. Children in such families learn to control other family members through aggression. This model of control behavior in the home is then generalized to peers. This process thus creates aggressive children.

Research focused on parental characteristics found that mothers of nonaggressive girls tended to use the strategy of discussion to solve social problems more often than mothers of aggressive girls. Fathers of nonaggressive girls had more alternative strategies for solving social problems than fathers of aggressive girls.

Influence of Television and Other Media

Of the several different forms of media, television is one of the most influential in terms of child development. The effects of seeing violence on television has been debated among the scientists interested in child development. The main reason why watching violence on television causes violence in real world is the pervasiveness of violent programs.

There are several ways of explaining how the viewing of violence on television affects aggression in young people, including the direct effect, desensitization, and the so-called mean world syndrome. Aggression and favorable attitudes toward the use of aggression will develop if people watch a lot of violence on television. This direct effect has been a focus of research. Ross Parke and his colleagues, working in a natural setting, found that boys who viewed aggressive movies displayed an increased amount of physical and verbal aggression against other children.

According to desensitization theory, people who watch a lot of violence on television may become less sensitive to the various kinds of aggression and violence in the real world.

A third explanation for the link between television and aggression holds that some people suffer from the mean world syndrome, in which they believe that the world is as dangerous as it appears on television.

The effect of television violence on children has been debated. It is important to note that psychologists and psychiatrists involved in media studies do not suggest that violent media are the only causes of violence in society.

The Effectiveness of Intervention to Reduce Aggression

A variety of ways of handling aggression have been suggested over the years. One aspect of social learning that tends to inhibit aggression is the tendency of most people to take responsibility for their own actions. But if this sense of responsibility is weakened, the tendency to act more aggressively will increase. (In one experiment, a researcher demonstrated that persons who are anonymous and unidentifiable tend to act more aggressively than persons who are not anonymous.)

There are a number of ways that an individual can reduce aggression. As long as there is a hope that is unsatisfied, there will be frustration that can result in aggression. Aggression can be reduced by satisfying that hope.

Doing something physically exerting or watching someone else engage in aggression directly or indirectly tends to relieve built-up aggressive energies and hence reduce the likelihood of further of aggressive behavior. This is called catharsis. The catharsis hypothesis also holds that watching an aggressive behavior on television serves a valuable function in draining off aggressive energy.

It has been argued that it might be possible to reduce aggression by presenting the child with the sight of aggressive models who come to bad ends. The implicit theory is that individuals who are exposed to this sight will in effect be vicariously punished for their own aggression and accordingly will become less aggressive.

Other methods of reducing aggression that have been proposed include defusing anger through apology and providing training in communication and problem-solving skills.

Using punishment to reduce aggressive behavior is tricky. It can be effective if it is not too severe and if it follows closely on the heels of the aggressive act.

Anger Management Programs

In 1997 Albert Ellis and Raymond Chip Tafrate presented an approach to the problem of dealing with anger called rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). This approach was designed to help people deal effectively with emotional problems and to systematically understand the roots and nature of anger. REBT deals with the problem of anger realistically. The core of REBT is unconditional acceptance of self and then continually maintaining this feeling of self-acceptance.

The Role That Peers Play

Children generally establish strong, stable, mutual affiliations with peers similar to themselves in aggression, but aggressive children have more difficulty establishing such affiliations. The interaction of peer pairs containing at least one aggressive child was characterized by more frequent, lengthy, and intense conflict regardless of the affiliate relationship characterizing the pair. Researchers found that the amount of time children spent interacting with aggressive peers predicted changes in observed and teacher-rated aggression three months later.

Peer estimation of aggression was found to be internally more consistent than self-estimation. This was true of both sexes for both the aggressive and victim version of the test. Participants seem to be more reliable when they estimate the degree to which they are the victims of others' aggression than when they estimate the degree to which they themselves are aggressive. This is particularly true for girls.

Influences of Socialization

Although growing up in a violent community is associated with aggressive behavior, the degree to which this can be considered seriously pathological has been called into question by the results of some research.

See also: ANGER; VIOLENCE

Bibliography

Aronson, E., T. D. Wilson, and R. M. Akert. Social Psychology. New York: Longman, 1997.

Baron R. A., and D. Byrne. Social Psychology: Understanding Human Interaction, 5th edition. Newton, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1987.

Betsch, T., and D. Dickenberger. "Why Do Aggressive Movies Make People Aggressive? An Attempt to Explain Short-Term Effects of the Depiction of Violence on the Observer." Aggressive Behavior 19 (1993):137-149.

Buss, A. Psychology: Man in Perspective. New York: Wiley, 1973.

Dollard, John, L. W. Doof, N. E. Miller, O. H. Mowrer, and R. R. Sears. Frustration and Aggression. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Ellis, Albert, and Raymond Chip Tafrate. How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You. Toronto: Carol Publishing, 1997.

Groves, P. M., and G. V. Rebeck. Introduction to Biological Psychology, g4th edition. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown, 1992.

Österman, K., K. Björkqvist, K. M. J. Lagerspetz, A. Kaukianen, L.R. Huesmann, and A. Fraczek. "Peer and Self-Estimated Aggression and Victimization in Eight-Year-Old Children from Five Ethnic Groups." Aggressive Behavior 20 (1994):411-428.

Pakaslahti, L., I. Spoof, R. L. Asplund-Peltola, and L. Keltikangas-Jaarvinen. "Parent's Social Problem Solving Strategies in Families with Aggressive and Non-Aggressive Girls." Aggressive Behavior 34 (1998):37-51.

Snyder, J., E. Horsh, and J. Childs. "Peer Relationships of Young Children: Affiliative Choices and the Shaping of Aggressive Behavior." Journal of Clinical Psychology 26, no. 2 (1997):145-155.

Maria Adiyanti