Human Aggression

1. Human Aggression “Anderson, Craig a. and Bushman, brad j. “Human Aggression.” Review of Psychology 53 (2002): 27-51. ProQuest. Web. 4 feb. 2014.

2. Defining Aggression • “Human aggression is any behavior directed toward another individual that is carried out with the proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm. In addition, the perpetrator must believe that the behavior will harm the target, and that the target is motivated to avoid the behavior” (28) • Not • Accidental • “incidental by-product of helpful actions” • Sexual masochism

3. Defining Violence “Violence is aggression that has extreme harm as its goal (e.g., death). All violence is aggression, but many instances of aggression are not violent” (29)

4. Types of Aggression Hostile – impulsive, thoughtless, unplanned. Driven by anger. Reactionary. Goal = harm Instrumental – premeditative. Goal = something beyond harming the victim

5. Suggested Contributing Factors Accessibility of firearms Global warming Violence against children in schools and homes Exposure to violent entertainment

6. Cognitive Neoassociation Theory Unpleasant experience produce negative feeling This “automatically stimulates various thoughts, memories, expressive motor reactions, and physiological responses associated with both fight and flight tendencies” (30) Fight = anger, flight = fear Role of memory and association Network

7. Social Learning Theory “People acquire aggressive responses the same way they acquire other complex forms of social behavior—either by direct experience or by observing others” (31)

8. Script Theory • “Huesman (1986, 1998) proposed that when children observe violence in the mass media, they learn aggressive scripts” (31) • Scripts • Guide behavior • Person assumes role • Expectations and assumptions • “well-rehearsed, highly associated concepts in memory, often involving causal links, goals, and action plans” (31)

9. Excitation Transfer Theory “If two arousing events are separated by a short amount of time, arousal from the first event may be misattributed to the second event” (32) Anger

10. Social Interaction Theory • Actor is a decision-maker who weighs rewards, costs, different outcomes • A person “uses coercive actions to produce some change in the target’s behavior” (32) • Something of value • Revenge • Bring about social/self identities

11. Personality Factors • Traits • Susceptibility towards hostile attribution, perception, and expectation biases • High self-esteem, especially inflated or unstable narcissism • Sex • “The ratio of male to female murderers in the U.S. is about 10:1 (FBI 1951-1999)” (35) • Provocation affects males and females differently • Males prefer direct aggression, females prefer indirect

12. Personality Factors Cont’d • Beliefs • Self-efficacy and outcome efficacy • Attitudes • Positive attitude toward violence • Racism, sexism • Values • Codes of honor • Long-term goals

13. Situational Factors Aggressive cues Provocation Frustration Pain and discomfort Drugs Incentives

14. Anger • “Anger reduces inhibitions against aggressing” (44) • Anger • Interferes with higher-level cognitive processes • Allows a person to maintain an aggressive intention longer • “energizes behavior”

15. Experiments “

16. Milgram Experiment 1961 Results: The subjects were willing to administer lethal harm when told to do so by an authoritative figure.

17. Bobo Doll Experiment 1961, 1963 Social learning theory Reward vs. punishment Results: Those exposed to the aggressive model were more likely to be aggressive

18. Stanford Prison Experiment 1971 Volunteers were assigned roles as guards or inmates Results: Both “guards” and “inmates” internalized their roles. The “guards” administered psychological abuse and adopted authoritarian measures.

19. “In a remarkable experiment first reported in the Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology some time ago, schoolchildren of the same age were divided into two groups: one group was encouraged to be aggressive and the other to be cooperative. Within a few weeks they were behaving quite differently. Both groups were then brought together and subjected to an acute frustration: They were sat down in a nice big room with a projector that was flanked by several cans of film. For good measure, each child was given a candy bar but told not to start in on it just yet. The room was darkened and the first film started – suddenly, without a word of explanation, the experimenters snapped on the lights, shut off the projector, confiscated the candy bars, and packed the children off to their respective classrooms. Science is rough! But the issue was important – to see if the cooperative training would hold up under such unmerited mistreatment – and the results, duly filmed through the classrooms’ one-way glass, were extremely suggestive. The children with pro-aggression training were of course hell on wheels; their frustration boiled over in fights, arguments, and general mayhem more than ever. That was not very surprising. But the rest was: the children who had been systematically encouraged to cooperate with each other were more cooperative than ever. Apparently their cooperation training not only protected them from frustration, it allowed them to thrive on it. They were able, that is, to divert the negativity it released within them into constructive channels. Psychic tension, it seems, is neither good nor bad in itself; it can be thought of as raw energy that becomes destructive or helpful when it is made to flow through aggressive or cooperative channels.” Nagler, Michael. Is There No Other Way: The Search for a Nonviolent Future.