Essays

• Esssay A01:

  ID: present at birth, Primal instinct such as violent motives, selfish needs, unacceptable sexual desires

  Ego: develops at 3 a child is aware of others feelings and it can’t have its own way

  Superego:appears around the age of five its conscience and a child internalises the morality principle this includes thoughts and perceptions 

  Aggression can be explained if the id is dominant or the child fails to develop guilt or shame when their superego developed age 5-6 therefore they may be aggressive as they might not feel guilt after doing something undesirable 
• Devina 2010 study explained how the growing influence on the left hemisphere might link to Freuds idea of growth ego and children

  • study showed that only the right hemisphere is fully functional at birth and remains dominant for the first 2 to 3 hearts of a child’s life
  • Therefore infants develop patterns of emotional communication prior to developing the left hemisphere based verbal skills when the hemisphere becomes fully functional in the third year 
• Refuting research linking aggression to hormones rather than unconscious mind, dabs 1995

  • found higher levels of testosterone in adult male prisoners who had committed violent crimes compared to property crimes so hormones may explain aggressive behaviour
  • The research increases validity of the theory that testosterone increases aggression
• Thanatos and Eros A01

  Key influence of the unconscious is our two opposing drives Thanatos and Eros. Thanatos is our death instinct that drives us towards self destruction however our Eros is our life preservation. Over time this instinct builds upon creating pressure we cannot control that’s makes us do something aggressive. Eros to stop us fr4on self destructing redirects our aggression outwardly towards others.
• Strengths:

  Freuds little hans study showed how hans anger towards his father was displaced onto horses leading him to develop a fear of horses

  • this was helping him to resolve his inner turmoil of desiring his mother ans wanting to hurt his father
  • By redirecting his anger he was also protecting himself from the conflict that hurting his father would’ve caused which supports the Thanatos and Eros theory 
• Weakness:

  However freuds research was not scientific as it was based on letters of correspondence between little Hans’ father and Freud. This was also Freud a interpretation of the letters which means that Freud could have been biased towards his own theory’s
• Catharsis A01

  According to Freud venting anger can be cathartic because it releases psychic energy, and reduces the aggressive drive making further aggression less likely.Preventing catharsis builds up energy producing destructive aggression that could be directed inwards or outwards. Catharsis can be achieved in a few ways for example displacement where aggression toward one person is redirected against a less powerful and more available substitute observing others being aggressive or taking part in extreme sport 
• Strengths 

  Graham et al 2008 supports psychodynamic theory as he suggested that expressing aggression can be cathartic.

  • graham suggests that we should rant verbally go over something that is upsetting person  especially through writing rather than venting physically releasing aggression 
  • This is because it involves considering why the person is angry
  • However venting is an uncontrollable expression of anger but ranting allows an individual to gain control over feeling and avoid aggressive behaviour 
• Refuted by bushman 2002

  • made 600 collage students angry by getting a confederate to critise their essay
  • One group of randomly allocated students were allowed to vent their anger with punching bag thinking of confederate 
  • Bushman also found these students blasted confederate with the loudest and longest noises in another task compared with control group who didn’t vent anger
• A01 about sample

  • Consisted of 41 murders pleading not guilty by reason of insanity 
  • 41 non murder control group
  • Experimental group had 39 male and 2 female who were charged with murder of manslaughter in California 
  • Each murder was matched with someone in control group on sex, age and mental disability
  • 6 murders were schizophrenics matched with 6 schizophrenics in control group 
  • Control group has a physical and psychological evaluation to confirm that they had no history of mental illness other than 6 schizophrenics 
• A03 generalisability strength of sample

  • both groups consisted of 39 men and 2 women the split gender is a strength an it makes the sample representative of target population meaning that the results can be generalised to a wider population of murders
• A03 generalisability weakness of sample

  • not representative as sample is ethnocentric as all members were Americans pleading NGRI therefore cannot be applied to the target population of typical murders  
• A01 procedure

  • 10 mins before task participants carried out practice tests of the continuous performance task to ensure they were equally familiar with it. 
  • Each participant completeness CPT for 32 minutes which evolved identifying targets on a screen and pressing a button 
  • 30 seconds Ito task they injected with radioactive tracer
  • After CPT they underwent pet scan which took 10 images of slices through the brain at 10mm intervals
• A03 reliability strength of procedure

  • high reliability as prodedure was standardised with same amount of time between task, same CPT test and same PET scan 
  • Ensures that study can be repeated easily in the future to check for consistent results
• A03 reliability weakness of pet scan 

  • however frequent issues with the realiabilitys of PET scanning due to difficulty interpreting scans could lead to inconsistency and subjectivity in results therefore reducing realiability 
• A01 procedure 

  • raine had a large sample size of 41 murders and 41 controls using a matched pair design including participants who were matched with schizophrenia 
  • In addition all participants stopped taking meds 2 weeks prior to the study confirmed by urine tests.
  • Procedure took part is a controlled lab setting were the PET was completed
• A03 validity strength

  • good internal validity due to large sample size eliminating risk of anomalies skewing the results and therefore invalidating the study
• A03 validity weakness

  • reduced ecological validity as CPT is not reflective of real ;life situations or circumstances where aggression may occur
  • Does not take into account situational factor’s 
• Conclusion 

  The researchers are very moderate in their claims for their findings – they acknowledge the methodological limitations of their study and resist the temptation to attribute violent behaviour to biological factors alone. For example, it is not possible to establish the causes of the brain differences, and these could be due to environment effects.

  Even so, it is clear from the findings that brain dysfunctions play a potentially key role in violence. This means that the research has some potentially useful  practical applications, but they do raise very serious ethical concerns.