frustration-aggression

• when does frustration happen?

  when goal-directed behaviour is blocked by external factors
• What is the feeling of relief when frustration is removed/relieved?

  Catharsis: emotional release achieved/satisfaction by engaging in aggressive behaviour/thoughts
• Dollard (1939): Frustration-Aggression hypothesis

  All aggression is a result of frustration

  Frustration = any event stimulus that prevents an individual from attaining some goal and its accompanying reinforcing quality e.g when people are prevented from getting something they want

  Frustration is necessary for aggression
• what factors (Dollard) increase likelihood of frustration turning into aggression?

  proximity to the goal

  if aggression is likely to remove the barrier to the goal
• Aggression not always is expressed directly towards source of aggression because:

  • The source is abstract (e.g the government)
  • Source is too powerful or authoritarian and we risk punishment (teacher/police)
• Displacement/ Kicking-The-Dog Effect

  What people do when they get frustrated but cannot satisfy their drive to be aggressive towards their object of frustration

  • Aggression is displaced from one source to something else e.g dog
  • In order to experience catharsis, a scapegoat needs to be found
• What is the weapons effect?

  Participants who saw the guns were more aggressive than participants who saw the sports items.
• The Car study:

  people who drove with guns in the car were more likely to drive more aggressive; was it acc the guns that made them aggressive? Quasi experiment means the IV cannot be manipulated and thus cannot definitely be said to have an effect on the DV
• Replication of original weapons effect study:

  mere sight of weapons increases aggression in both angry and non-angry individual
• Limitation: research showing that aggression may not be cathartic.

  Bushman (2002)


  Participants who vented their anger by punching something became more aggressive than before

  Doing nothing was more effective to calm
• Bushman

  doing something such as punching something is called the Kicking The Dog effect, and acts as a displacement.

  However, this shows that people became more aggressive.

  Thus, aggression cannot be entirely cathartic as it would be expected that doing nothing would build-up aggression and punching something would release it, yet this did not happen.

   

  The central assumption - the idea that aggression must be cathartic - lacks validity, and therefore the entire hypothesis lacks face and concurrent (?) validity.
• Limitation: relationship between frustration and aggression is much more complex than this hypothesis explains.


  Frustration does not always lead to aggression.

  Similarly, aggression can occur without the presence of frustration. No automatic link where frustration instantly or always leads to aggression, or cases where the presence of aggression can always be traced back to frustration - there are other factors.