Social Psychology - Aggression Notes

Aggression  -physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another  Does not have to be bodily harm, could be emotional or monetary  We make distinctions between aggression  Hostile or instrumental  Hostile- hurting someone just to hurt them, you’re angry  Instrumental- you are accomplishing another goal w your aggression  Social/relational aggression- hurting someone else’s feelings or threatening their relationships in some way  -Cyberbullying, regular bullying, social exclusion, gossip  Physical aggression physically harming some else- fighting shooting, beating, stabbing  Hostile aggression- completely driven by anger and performed as an end in itself  Can be physical or social  Aim is purely to injure them  Beating someone else because you’re mad at them  Instrumental  Harm is inflicted as a means to a desired end  Can either be social or physical  Beating someone else to show other people you’re strong  Tonya Harding- instrumental physical aggression  Instances aren’t always clear from one or the other  If a man learns his wife has an affair he flies into a jealous rage and kills her lover- hostile because he’s angry, and instrumental because he wants his wife to experience loss or not be with them  Both mechanisms may be operating in most cases to different degrees  Purely instrumental (no emotions) aggression- contract killers  As a Biological Phenomenon  Is it pure instinct?  No because there are individual differences, all humans would be equal in aggression but we’re not  Neural basis- Direct stimulation of certain areas of the brain can make docile animals suddenly aggressive and vice versa  Prefrontal cortex 14% less active in murderers- involved in planning and decisions  Violent men tend to have smaller amygdala’s  Genetics-  Identical twins are morel likely to have a criminal record than fraternal  Hormonal-  Prisoners who had committed crimes against individuals involving sex and violence- have higher testosterone levels than prisoners who committed nonviolent property crimes  In humans the evidence is mixed not unanimous  Klinesmith, kasser, and McAndrew  Looking to see the extent to which aggression is biological or based on our environment  Measured participants testosterone - provided a baseline, a control, no special influence  Participants were assigned to two conditions- either given a toy gun and told to assemble it and write instructions to someone else on how to assemble it  Participants were assigned a children’s game and told to write instructions to someone else on how to put it together  Immediately after they measured testosterone again  Participants were told you’re going to do a taste sensitivity testresearchers mixed in one drop of franks red hot sauce into a cup of water and told participants a previous participant made this taste test and now it’s your turn.  Two dependent variables- testosterone change between baseline and after assembling the game/gun and how much hot sauce did they add to the other persons cup  Children Games had almost zero change in testosterone  Putting together a gun had a fair amount of increase  People who had assembled the toy administered more hot sauce than the people who did the children’s game  The testosterone changes and the amount of hot sauce added were strongly correlated- the higher peoples testosterone change the more hot sauce they administered  Correlation cannot demonstrate causation, ever  Biology and environment interact- the gun brought the testosterone levels up- evidence for interaction of environment and biology  Frustration Aggression Theory  Unjustified frustration – caused by someone blocking a goal of yours  This anger triggers you to be ready to engage in aggressive behavior  Athlete in important race- referee makes unfair call, blocks goal to win, you become angry and prepares you to be aggressive onto other contacts, could lash out at ref or friends and family around you  The closer people are to obtaining their goal before being blocked the more aggression is triggered  Harris 1974  Researchers had experimenters cut in line in a movie theater  Variable- were the people 2nd in line or 12th in line  Made a graph of how verbally aggressive they were- overall the people 2nd in line were more verbally aggressive than those 12th  Provides support for frustration aggressive theory  Male subjects were expected to be more aggressive than females, when the experimenter was female, people were expected to not be as aggressive  This was false, people were the most aggressive when they were of the same gender*****  Sometimes we displace the aggression from the source of frustration onto different targets  Displacement of aggression can have very serious consequences  Post 911 there was a huge spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes  Theory of Relative Deprivation  Absolute deprivation- state of not having something, may not miss it but you don’t have it  Relative deprivation- perception that one is lower in desired outcome than others within a comparison group****  - If you’re equally good as your coworkers yet they have a higher salary than you  A gap between what you think you should have and what you do have- attributable to social comparison theory- we are somewhat realistic about who are comparing ourselves too  Frustration then leads to aggression  Evidence- crime rates are not the highest in countries where they have the highest poverty rates, instead it’s the highest in countries with the greatest income disparities- large gaps between rich and poor  When TV’s came out there was a sudden increase in theft- people were seeing on tv what they don’t have and it was inducing relative deprivation  Positive Affect Theory of Aggression  We aggress because it feels good  May have an evolutionary basis -being aggressive helped survival  -It served people feel to take pleasure in being aggressive  Chester 20117  Exacting revenge makes us feel good  Domain of revenge elicits the most positive affect  Evidence in 3 domains  Self-report data  Exacting revenge leads to higher scores, on positive affect mood scales, especially positive emotions that have to do with arousalpleasure is more positive than calm***  Neuroimaging data  Anger and revenger are associated with approach patterns of neural activity as opposed to avoidance, which are usually positive affect  Personality trait data  Personality traits are linked to positive arousal- sensation seeking, alcohol drugs also correlate with aggression  Eadeh, peak, and lambert 2017  Gave participants one of two passages to read-  Control passage- neutral body of text  One that was meant to elicit feelings of revenge- about 9/11 attacks  1 Self-report mood scale  2 Linguistic analysis- had participants free write their responses to the passages- any thought and emotions you’re feeling  When they did the linguistic analysis, both positive and negative emotion were higher in the revenge condition  In the self-report data- only negative affect increased  The linguistic analysis gets a richer picture of thoughts and feelings  When you’re given a written scale with restricted words, you’re not able to express yourself as freely  This study provided support for the positive affect theory of aggression  Social Learning Theory of Aggression  -Aggression as a Learned Behavior  We learn aggressive behavior by observing and imitating others and see them experience its pay offs  Kids who witness corporal punishment tend to be more aggressive  Banduras Bobo doll studies- classic demonstrations of the social learning theory of aggression  People used to think watching aggression helped reduce it  Every child mimicked the violent behavior they witnessed, especially if the child and adult were the same sex**  When adults were nice to Bobo doll so were children  By watching aggressive models people learn specific aggressive behaviors and develop more positive attitudes and beliefs about aggression in general  Aggression is most likely to increase if model is rewarded and not punished for their aggressive behavior, witnessed no consequence  Cultural Theory of Aggression  Comes from observation that southern men are more likely to be violent and aggressive than northern  41% of all crimes committed in south, only 25% of population  Culture of honor  -tendency to believe that if you are slighted in some way you should retaliate  -an economy based on hurting, really easy to steal people’s wealth, people had to be willing to be physically aggressive  Murders there are only exceeding the rest of the country when it involves interpersonal conflict not when it involves theft or burglary  Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle & Nobert  P told to walk down a hall, confederate was sitting and filing materials, would get up bump him and call him an asshole  They observed Northern vs Southern participants  Measured testosterone before and after the bump