CHAPTER 10 – Aggression and antisocial behavior

Aggression: defined as any behavior intended to harm another person who is motivated to
avoid the harm (as in the person does not want to be harmed)

1. aggression is a behaviour—you can see it. Aggression is not an emotion nor a

thought, such as anger or mentally rehearsing a murder 
2. aggression is intentional (not accidental), and the intent is to harm.
3. victim wants to avoid the harm. (eg SM sex play not counted because the victim
wanted to be ‘harmed’)
4. Note that behaviors that are intended to harm others are still acts of aggression
even if they don’t actually harm them.

displaced aggression: any behaviour that intentionally harms a substitute target rather than
the provocator. Eg employee gets told off by boss at work, but instead of letting off the
aggression behaviour at the boss, he replaced the behaviour to his family back home.

direct aggression: any behaviour that intentionally harms another person who is physically
present (e.g., hitting a person in the face)

indirect aggression: any behaviour that intentionally harms another person who is physically
absent (e.g., burning his house down while he is away). 

Males are more likely to use direct aggression, whereas females are more likely to use
indirect aggression.

Bullying: persistent aggression by a perpetrator against a victim for the purpose of establishing
a power relationship over the victim

Cyberbullying: the use of the Internet (e.g., e-mail, social network sites, blogs) to bully others

violence: aggression that has as its goal extreme physical harm, such as injury or death

Antisocial behaviour: behaviour that either damages interpersonal relationships or is

culturally undesirable
- Littering, cheating, lying, and stealing, on the other hand, are behaviors that qualify
as antisocial but may or may not be aggressive.

the world is less violent now than in the past

- Although one can kill a lot more people with a bomb than with an axe, the death
rates per battle were much higher in the past. Estimates show that if the wars of the
20th century had killed the same proportion of the population as ancient tribal wars,
then the death toll would have been 20 times higher—2 billion rather than 100
million.
Instinct: an innate (inborn, biologically programmed) tendency to seek a particular goal, such
as food, water, or
- promoted survival of individuals. Because fighting is closely linked to mating, the
aggressive instinct helped ensure that only the strongest individuals would pass on
their genes to future generations.

Eros: constructive, life-giving instinct

Thanatos: destructive, death instinct

- According to social learning theory, aggression is not an innate drive; People learn
aggressive behaviours the same way they learn other social behaviours. According to
this theory, people observe and copy the behavior of others—called modeling.
- Watching aggression behavious on television was enough to make children more
aggressive
- Abdul believes that children are aggressive because they imitate what they see
family members and media characters do. Abdul’s beliefs are consistent with social
learning theory.

Modelling: observing and copying or imitating the behaviour of others.

frustration–aggression hypothesis: proposal that “the occurrence of aggressive behavior

always presupposes the existence of frustration,” and “the existence of frustration always leads
to some form of aggression”

frustration: blockage of or interference with a personal goal

unpleasant moods (anger or frustration) increase aggression:

angry people aggress in the hope that doing so will enable them to feel better. Research has
consistently shown that people who feel bad often try to remedy or repair their moods.
Because many people believe that venting is a healthy way to reduce anger and aggression

hostile attribution bias: the tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as aggressive
for example, if a person bumps into you, a hostile attribution would be that the person did it
on purpose to harm or annoy you.

hostile perception bias: the tendency to perceive social interactions in general as being
aggressive
such as seeing two other people having a conversation and inferring that they are arguing or
getting ready to fight.
Even something as subtle as an advertisement for alcohol can increase hostile perceptions,
perhaps because most people strongly associate alcohol with aggression.

hostile expectation bias: the tendency to assume that people will react to potential conflicts
with aggression
For example, if you bump into another person, a hostile expectation would be that the
person will assume that you did it on purpose and will attack you in return. Of course,
people are more likely to behave aggressively themselves if they expect others to behave
aggressively.

In summary, aggressive people have inner biases that make them

1. expect others to react aggressively,
2. view ambiguous acts as aggressive, and
3. assume that when someone does something to hurt or offend them, it was deliberately
and intentionally designed to have that hurtful effect even if it was accidental

AGE
- Richard Tremblay has provided evidence that very young children are in fact the
most aggressive human beings on earth
- Toddlers may resort to aggression 25% of the time, but as they grow up, they learn
to inhibit aggression.
- Official records show that violent criminal offending is highest for individuals
(especially men) between 15 and 30 years old, and declines significantly after that.

Gender Differences
research shows that when male rats are under stress, they respond by either fighting or
running away, called the fight or flight syndrome.
- fight or flight syndrome: a response to stress that involves aggressing
against others or running away

In contrast, female rats respond to stress by nurturing others and making friends, called the
tend and befriend syndrome.
tend and befriend syndrome: a response to stress that involves nurturing others and
making friends

- preschool years, with boys showing higher levels of physical aggression than
girls.
- elementary grades and in adolescence, gender differences increase. Indirect
aggression becomes much greater for girls than boys, physical aggression
becomes much greater for boys than girls, and verbal aggression is about the
same for girls and boys.

Females are much more likely than males to engage in relational aggression (also
called social aggression), defined as intentionally harming another person’s social
relationships, feelings of acceptance, or inclusion within a group.

Interpersonal Causes of Aggression

1. Selfishness and Influence
- Some people regard physical violence as immoral and will not engage in it under
almost any circumstances, whereas others are far less inhibited.
 - Creatures that don’t take care of themselves tend not to survive and reproduce,
so evolution has made most animals (including humans) selfish.
- People use many ways to strike back or punish someone who has wronged them,
ranging from directly hitting the person, to spreading nasty rumours, to
committing property crimes

2. Domestic Violence: Hurting Those We Love

- Defined as physically harmful actions that occur within the home or family,
between people who have a close relationship with each other
- average husband is taller, stronger, and heavier than his wife, so if they get into a
physical fight, she is much more likely to be injured or killed than he is.
- Domestic violence not only immediately harms victims, but it can also produce
long-term harmful consequences (e.g., depression, anxiety, insomnia)
- Parents who were abused as children are significantly more likely abuse their
own children.

3. Weapons Effect
- the increase in aggression that occurs as a result of the mere presence of a
weapon
- using a weapon can increase aggression and violence
- eg The presence guns activated aggressive tendencies via a nonconscious,
automatic response, making people react more aggressively than they would
have otherwise
4. Mass Media
- experiments have shown that exposure to media violence causes an increase in
aggressive behaviour
- Violent behavior is complex and is caused by multiple factors, often acting
together. The more extreme the violent behavior (e.g., from hitting, to shooting,
to rampage shooting), the more complex the causality may be.

5. Unpleasant Environments
- Numerous studies have shown that loud noises can increase aggression, 
- Temperatures can even influence judgments about criminals and their crimes.
- participants in a room with a high temperature (79.2 °F; 26.2 °C) judged the
same criminal and his crime to be more impulsive. 
6. Chemical Influences
- Alcohol has long been associated with violent and aggressive behavior. 

Self-Control
- poor self-control is a better predictor of violent crimes than of nonviolent crimes
- Most crime is selfish because it seeks to benefit the individual at others’ expense.
-  Drunk people have less control over their aggressive behavior than do sober
people, perhaps because alcohol interferes with executive functions.

culture of honour: a society that places high value on individual respect, strength,
and virtue, and accepts and justifies violent action in response to threats to one’s honor
four other common forms of antisocial behavior:
(1) lying, deliberately making a false statement, usually to mislead someone
(2) cheating,
(3) stealing, and
(4) littering.

(1) Lying
- People also lie on social network sites such as Facebook to promote themselves
- Lying in romantic relationships tends to be reciprocal—if one partner lies, the
other also lies.
- Sometimes a mechanical device known as a polygraph (popularly called a lie
detector) is used to “detect” lies.

(2) Cheating
- Cheating is widely recognized as an antisocial, undesirable behavior,
- experiments have shown that people can get pleasure by cheating even though they
expected to feel guilty rather than self-satisfied, and even apart from the benefit of
acquiring money.

(3)stealing
Identity theft: consists of stealing someone’s personal information (e.g., Social
Security number, bank account, credit card number) and using it without their
permission, usually to obtain money or goods.

(4) littering

Norms: social standards that prescribe what people ought to do

injunctive norms: norms that specify what most others approve or disapprove of
descriptive norms: norms that specify what most people do
psychological reactance: the unpleasant emotional response people experience
when someone is trying to restrict their freedom to engage in a desired behavior