ethological explanations of aggression

• ethology is the study of natural animal behaviour, studying aggression in animals provides insights into aggression in humans and helps inform evolutionary explanations of human aggression
• Lorenz (1996) argued that aggressive behaviour is innate, (biologically pre-programmed) response that has evolved to help species survive and pass on their genes. He argued that aggression is a biological need such as eating or drinking. In the same way that hunger continuously builds up until an animal eats food, innate releasing mechanisms mean aggression continuously builds up until the animal behaves aggressively and satisfies the need
• Patterns of aggressive behaviour within a species are often ritualistic, from an evolutionary perspective, it wouldn't make sense for members of a species to try and actually kill each other every time they fight because then the species would go extinct. Instead, rituals enable members of a species to compete and establish dominance without actually harming each other. EG a wolf who loses a fight exposes its neck to the signal that it has lost. This position makes it easy for the winner to kill the loser but instead the fight ends there.
• fixed action patterns- aggressive behaviours within a species often follow set patterns known as fixed action patterns, these patterns are universal across the species and once they are initiated the animal will keep going until the behaviour is complete
• innate releasing mechanisms- are biologically hard-wired mechanisms for aggression (eg brain structures or neural pathways for aggression), environmental cues, (eg the red belly of a rival stickleback) trigger the innate releasing mechanism, this releases a fixed action pattern of behaviour.
• the typical behaviour pattern for aggressive behaviour in an animal is as follows- aggression continually builds up over time, an environmental stimulus triggers the innate releasing mechanism, the innate releasing mechanism releases a fixed action pattern of behaviour, aggression is released and the cycle repeats itself.