Aggression AO3

• Disinhibition

  Strength - Berkowitz and Alioto found that ppts who saw vengence in a film gave longer and more electric shock - vengence is a powerful justification for aggressive behaviour

  Limitation - individual differences - the individual should be more involved/engaged for disinhibition to occur
• Desensitisation

  Strength - Krahe - those who were habitual viewers of aggressive media had lower galvanic skin responses (GSR), showing evidence that they had lower physiological arousal when shown violent clips

  Limitations - Individual differences - not everyone is affected in the same way, this explanation is deterministic?

  This expanation says exposure to violent media makes individuals less emotional but aggression and violence id often underpinned by high emotions - desensitisation can't explain this
• Cognitive Priming

  Strength - Fischer et al - aggressive song lyrics about women, men then acted more aggressively toward women

  Practical application - we can challenge scripts with intervention

  Limitations - Individual differences

  Less likely with less realistic media (fiction seen in video games)
• De-individuation

  Strengths - Dodd - undergrad students asked what they would do with no consequences: 36% anti-social (26% with criminal activity), only 9% prosocial. Suggests link between anonymity, aggression and de-individuation

  Diener - naturalistic experiment with kids, given the opportunity to steal sweets and money, the group that stole the most were in a large group and anonymous
• De-individuation

  Weaknesses - very difficult to separate the effects of de-individuation from other social explanations like SLT e.g. hooliganism with football but not other sports suggesting behaviour has been internalised through SLT

  Gergen - strangers in a room - ppts in a dark room showed prosocial behaviour (touchy, more than 80% were aroused), ppts in the control group talked politely
• Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

  Strengths - Geen - male students completing a puzzle (4 conditions: interferring confederate; insulting confederate; impossible; control), the group with the insulting confederate gave the strongest (fake) shocks

  Berkowitz - confederates gave shocks to students in lab environmen, ppts had the opportunity to shock them back. With the prescence of two guns the average number of shocks was higher than with no guns - shows how frustration interacts with the environment to make aggressive responses more likely - these findings have potential ethical implications
• Frustraion-Aggression Hypothesis - Weakness

  Still doesn't account for aggression being triggered by many stimuli e.g. jealousy

  and the outcome of frustration may not always be aggression, could be despair

  This questions the hypothesis as it only explains how aggression arises in some circumstances not all
• Social Learning Theory

  Strengths - Bandura's Bobo Doll experiment - children imitated the aggressive behaviour that was modelled to them by adult role models, particularly imitated behaviour modelled by same-sex role models - follow up study found that they did it more when they saw the behaviour rewarded (vicarious reinforcement)

  Real life application - can help reduce aggressive behaviour using prosocial models

   
• Social Learning Theory

  Weaknesses - reductionist - overlooks the role of biology, in Bandura's study boys were unexplainably more aggressive (can be explained by increased testosterone in males)

  Individual differences - simply being exposed to the same role models doesn't determine behaviour
• Evolutionary explanation

  Strength - Shackleford - survey about mate retention strategies, people in long-term relationships, positive correlation between men's reports of their mate retention strategies and women's reports of their partners physical violence = men who use MRS are more likely to be physicallu violent - evolutionary basis
• Evolutionary explanation

  Weaknesses - correlation isn't causation, it's not possible to determine whether aggression is motivated by reproductive success or another reason - questions the validity of the approach

  Cultural differences can't be accounted for - Nisbett - north-south divide in homicide rates in the US, white males from the south are more likely to be aggressive. Concluded aggressive behaviour was learned from social norms amongst them, these differences cannot be explained by this approach even though they should be universal - questions the validity of the claims
• Ethological explanation

  Strengths - Tinbergen - male stickleback fish would attack any object with red, aggressive displays were unchanging, supports the claim that animals have a specific stimulus (triggers IRM), supports nature basis

  Sackett - reared monkeys in isolation, when matured and shown threatening pictures of monkeys, they reacted defensively even though they'd never been shown that behaviour, suggests there is an IRM to detect threat which activates FAP
• Ethological explanation

  Weaknesses - Goodall - found that some chimpanzees continued to act aggressively even when shown appeasement, some even killed, challenges FAP claim that it should be relatively harmless

  Difficult to generalise IRM and FAP to humans and warfare, most research is into animals
• Genetic factors - Strengths

  • Coccaro et al
  • physical aggression: MZ twins - 50% concordance, DZ twins - 19% concordance, shows greater genetic relation, indicating genes may be the basis of aggression
  • Hutchings and Mednick
  • 14,000 adoptions in Denmark, significant positive correlation between convictions for criminal violence among biological fathers and biological sons (who were raised by adoptive parents), supports nature over nurture (suggests that despite their adoptive home environment, the influence of nature is stronger
• Genetic factors - Weaknesses

  • MZ twin studies are never 100% concordance, despite sharing 100% DNA = can't only be down to genetics, must be environmental influences like social and cultural contexts which play an important role in aggression
  • Gene-environment interaction is more likely - expression of the MAOA gene is sensitive to social experiences - Capsi - children with low MAOA variant are more likely to exhibit anti-social behaviour, if maltreated, suggesting an interaction between genes and the environment is a more likely valid explanation
• Neural mechanisms - Strength

  Gospic - 35 ppts, fMRI of amygdala, in a group suppressing the ANS, the ppts rejected fewer unfair offers compared to the control group (showed faster and more heightened response from the amygdala) = Amygdala is the key structure for emotional reactivity to sensory information, important in reactive aggression
• Hormonal mechanisms - Strengths

  Dolan - positive correlation between testosterone and aggressive behaviours in male offenders (in maximum security prisons) with history of violent behaviour, supporting that testosterone is associated with aggressive behaviour, validating the biological basis

  Dabbs - association between high testosterone and violent crimes in prison inmates, compared to lower testosterone levels and non-violent crimes
• Neural and Hormonal mechanisms - Weaknesses

  Too simplistic - only focusses on one biological process, a more holistic explanation would be more valid

  Determining causation - research is mostly correlational, it's unclear whether brain structures and biochem cause aggressive behaviour OR if aggression modifies our biology, harder to validate the claim
• Dispositional explanation (Institutional aggression)

  Strength - DeLisi - juvenile delinquents with negative dispositional features are more likely to engage in violent acts and suicidal activities - not related to the prison environment

  Weakness - Lacks usefulness - no effective interventions, prisoners have little control over their aggression
• Situational explanation (Institutional aggression)

  Strength - Cunningham - 35 inmate murders in Texas were linked to deprivation e.g. arguments about drugs - predicted by the model

  Weakness - contradictory evidence - Hensley - no link between conjugal visits from partners and reduced aggressive behaviour, goes against the model's predictions