Aggression - Physical or Verbal Behavior Intended to Hurt Someone

Aggression: physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone ● Need to look at behavior AND intent ● Hostile vs instrumental ○ Hostile: goal is to harm/irritate ○ Instrumental: aggression that harms/irritates in pursuit of a goal Age trends of aggression ● Verbal replaces physical with age ● Instrumental high early and declines from 4-7 ● Hostile increases from 4-7 ● Highly stable from middle childhood to adulthood ○ Leonard Eron Gender trends ● Preschool: boys more aggressive ● School age: physical boys > girls, verbal boys = girls Causes of aggression theories ● Biological evidence: hormones ○ Research on female animals that were injected with male hormones prenatally, researchers watched them grow up, females with injected hormones showed more aggression than those who were not injected ○ Male criminals have increased levels of testosterone, violent women have higher levels of plasma testosterone ■ Do aggressive behaviors create an increase of testosterone ○ Females with adrenogenital syndrome (mothers take drugs during pregnancy) showed rougher play ■ These males had masculinized genitals so rougher play could also be a result of parents treating females with masculine attitudes ○ Self reported: those with more testosterone reported higher stress and anxiety ○ Serotonin: low levels lead to impulsive and aggressive behaviors ● Biochemical influences ○ Diets filled with transfats show increased levels of aggression ○ sugar/high fructose corn syrup increase aggression and violence, absence from children’s diets decreased aggression ○ High levels of alcohol leads to high levels of aggression → lower inhibitions on behaviors in brain ● Cognitive theory ○ Puzzle study: attributional bias ■ Do we use aggressive behaviors on purpose or on accident? ■ Looked at behavior of aggressive vs non aggressive boys ■ Confederate worked on a puzzle in a separate room, subject heard hostile, benign, ambiguous phrases → would the subject retaliate? ● Hostile intent: everyone retaliated ● Benign intent: everyone restrained ● Ambiguous intent: aggressive boys retaliated, non aggressive boys did not retaliate ● Social/Environmental theories ○ Hitting your child in any form (spanking, hitting, swatting) related to higher aggression in the child ○ Aggression is passed down from parents to older siblings to child, child will act aggressively in other scenarios ○ Socialization can explain the gender difference in aggression, society expects males to be more aggressive (parents write it off as “boys will be boys” when they fight) ○ Once a child is labeled as aggressive, peers/teachers/parents expect that behavior, self fulfilling prophecy tells the child to keep acting aggressive TV Violence ● Does tv violence cause a viewer to be more aggressive or is watching a violent tv show a release of aggression? (norwegian killer trained using violent video games) ● Average television is on for 8 hrs a day, kids watch for about 4 hrs a day ● 60% of american tv programs contain violent scenes - violent scenes are very realistic but the content of the violence is not ● 6 violent acts per hour, 350 murders on tv every night ● Violent content is 9% higher in children’s tv, 95% of the time the violence has no consequences Studies on TV Aggression ● Leonard Eron looked at aggression, the more violent programs children watched on tv, the more aggressive they were at school (study done in 1960’s) ● Johnson looked at tv watching in childhood and violent acts in adolescence, boys were significantly more aggressive ● Robertson followed kids and looked at percentage of criminal conviction in adults, similar data set to Johnson (boys ranked higher) Causality ● Measured aggression on the playground the next day based on type of tv show watched the night before ○ Power ranger group committed more violent acts than control group by 7 to 1 ratio ● Pretest/posttest measure on aggression before and after tv was introduced to small town in Canada ○ Aggression doubled in boys and girls of all ages ○ Reading level, creativity, and physical activity all decreased Media Viewing Experiments ● Coyne et al subjects were randomly assigned to physically aggressive movie, relationally aggressive, and nonaggressive control ● Measured aggression in a competitive reaction time task (physical aggression) and evaluations of a confederate of the experiment (relational aggression) ○ LOOK AT RESULTS ON CANVAS ○ Loudness: pick strength and duration of a noise blast ○ Duration: pick how much hot sauce opponent has to eat TV Violence changes thinking ● Desensitization ● Altered perceptions (mean world syndrome) ● How do we change this?? ○ Limit TV viewing and video games ○ Refrain from using TV as a reward or punishment ○ Encourage child-appropriate TV ○ View TV with children ○ Link TV to everyday learning experiences ○ Model good TV practices Video Games ● 97% of kids play video games ○ 99% of boys 11-17 year old play video games ● Average 8-18 year old spends 14 hours a week ● 60% of girls and 73% of boys (4th grade) said their favorite video game is violent ● Sandy Hook Shooting, Heath High School Shooting, Amadou Diallo, Flint Michigan girl, Columbine High School Shooting, Stefan Pakeerah murder, Devin Moore, Anders Breivik Norway Case ○ People blamed violent video games, these cases led researchers to investigate the violence ● Anderson et al ○ Believed that video games is causing the aggressive behaviors we see ○ Did a meta analysis to identify patterns ■ Consistent positive relationship with violent video games and aggressive behaviors ● Violent video game research ○ Video game violence positively associated with aggressive behavior, cognition, and affect ○ Video game violence related to desensitization, lack of empathy, and lack of prosocial behavior ○ Longitudinal studies start to point at causation ○ Player perspective, player role, and target of violence do not affect results ■ Other studies show decreased cognitive function, increased arousal, distorted social interaction, decreased quality of work/productivity Cognitive Functioning/Arousal ● ● ● ● Gregor Szycik 2010 IV: violent video game (first person shooter) vs nonviolent video game for 5 hrs a day DV: aggression questionnaire and functional MRI during resting period Conclusion: extended use of first person shooting games had an impact on brain activity (diminished brain activity) What’s the theory of why this relationship holds? ● Social learning theory (get rewarded for behavior) ● Social cognitive theory (observing violence and aggression and inputting it to our thought process) ● Social information processing (predicting that children are encoding cues that they see) ● Excitation transfer (graphic media leads to arousal - doesn’t matter if you enjoy the game or not - arousal carries over to unrelated situations) ● Cultivation theory (society has changed our thought process, seeing more aggressive activities leads us to be more susceptible to other aggressive acts) Moral Panic ● LOOK AT GRAPH ON CANVAS