Final Paper

Ben Baughman

Loras College

PSY: 201 - 01

December 16, 2021

 Aggression is a very prevalent action or reaction within our society, not only between

regular people but also between the police and society. It can be argued that being aggressive is

innately a part of being human and it has advantages, such as responding to some threatening

stimuli with aggression. Specifically, for males, aggressive behavior is typically a manifestation

of the presence of testosterone, whether it be play-fighting or a serious physical altercation.

Higher levels of testosterone in a males blood has some correlation with higher levels of

aggression (Geniole, 2020). There has been an increase in aggressive behavior displayed by the

police aimed towards society and vice versa as seen by the news, media, and released body

camera footage from police departments. Because of this increase in aggression on both sides, it

is important to study aggression to try and understand why a person is being aggressive and how

their brain is operating. Understanding these things with aggression can allow a person to

understand how someone is feeling, how to possibly deescalate a situation where someone is

being aggressive and because understanding aggression can prevent further actions of aggressive

behavior.

There are multiple structures within the brain that regulate aggression, one of these

structures is the amygdala. The amygdala contributes to aggression because this structure

processes fearful and dangerous stimuli, and sends signals to other parts of the brain to determine

if action is needed. When this structure is stimulated and signals are sent out to, aggressive

behavior can be shown. This structure is located within the temporal lobe next to the

hippocampus (see Figure 1.1). The hypothalamus contributes to aggression because it regulates

homeostasis for the body and receives messages from the amygdala to prepare the body for the

proper response to the fearful or dangerous stimuli. The hypothalamus is located in the center of

the brain and is above the hippocampus (see Figure 1.2). These two structures have large roles in
regard to aggression and the hypothalamus even releases a neurotransmitter, serotonin, that is

involved with aggression. Dopamine is another neurotransmitter that is associated with

aggression. It is associated with aggression because large amounts of dopamine can lead to

increased impulsiveness and aggressive behavior (Gouveia, 2019). Low levels of serotonin have

also been found to lead people to be impulsive and demonstrate aggressive behaviors (Gouveia,

2019). To try and understand aggression and what can cause it, multiple researchers have

conducted experiments to try and see which factors may have an influence on aggressive

behavior.

Researchers and Psychologists believe that people's behavior changes depending on if

they are being monitored or not. To test this, researchers conducted an experiment where they

took police officers from ten different departments and randomly assigned if they were going to

wear a body worn camera and what shift they were going to work. The question they were trying

to answer is does a body worn camera affect how likely a police officer is going to be assaulted

or shown aggression. Each department was assigned a researcher who frequently collected data

from the body-worn cameras as well as the officers who were not wearing the cameras. The

results from this data show that there were more than 100 assaults on officers who were a part of

the experimental group that was wearing the body worn cameras than the officers who were not

wearing body worn cameras (Ariel, et. all, 2018). Researchers use self-awareness theory to

explain this data, saying that once the officers were aware that their actions were being recorded

their behavior changed so that they were more vulnerable to be assaulted. Because the police

officers were aware they were being monitored, their prefrontal cortex was overactive which was

hindering their amygdala and hypothalamus’s ability to send proper signals to the rest of the

brain to execute the proper response.

 Another experiment looking at aggression and police officers was conducted by Richard

Johnson. This experiment was trying to see if it was possible to predict whether a police officer

would make an arrest or not by examining the positive/ negative factors that occurred before the

officer was sent on a call. Johnson set up the experiment by randomly dividing more than 150

officers from two different departments to be either positively or negatively primed, then

experienced a violent or nonviolent demeanor by the suspect. The results from this experiment

show that the officers who were negatively primed and experienced a violent demeanor, were

much more likely to make an arrest than any other officers with a different combination of

priming and demeanor. Officers who had experienced a negative priming and then had to deal

with the aggressive suspect were more likely to make an arrest because their amygdala was over-

stimulated. Since the officer's amygdala was already active, it had sent signals to the

hypothalamus so the officer was no longer in homeostasis. Because of this, the officers were

already on edge and were ready to take on a threatening stimulus.

Not only can stimulation or overstimulation cause aggression within police officers, but

also mental health issues can cause police officers to exhibit aggressive behavior. Researchers

wanted to know if there was a correlation between aggressive confrontations in police officers

and mental health problems or occupational/ life stressors. Mental health problems, in this

research, are being defined as depression, anxiety, sleeping issues and burnout symptoms (Van

der Veldon, et. all, 2010). These researchers took a sample of over 400 police officers, they were

interviewed for a baseline and then interviewed again 27 months later. From this study,

researchers found that mental health problems did not have a significant impact on if a police

officer was going to use aggression but occupational stressors and stressing life events were

better predictors. Officers who had occupational or life stressors going on within their lives were
more likely to exhibit aggression because their brains are constantly under large amounts of

stress so they are not able to think clearly. These officers' amygdalas are over-stimulated so they

are not able to process threats around them properly, leading them to use aggression when not

needed.

Aggression is a very prevalent action or reaction within our society, and it can even be argued

that it is innately part of being human. There has been an increase in aggressive behavior by the

police towards society and vice versa as seen in the news, media and released body-worn camera

footage. It is important to understand aggression because having this understanding allows

someone to know why a person is being aggressive and how their brain is operating. Within the

brain, the amygdala and the hypothalamus are two parts of the brain that have a large role in

aggression. To try and understand aggression better, the three experiments listed above took a

look at different factors, such as environmental and behavioral, to try and see how these factors

influence aggression. Both environmental and behavioral factors had a part in explaining

aggressive behavior in police.

Understanding the neurobiology of aggression is helpful for me because I am going in the

criminal justice field and the police are the ones who are being called to try and resolve different

situations that may involve aggression. Police officers get into situations that involve aggression

all the time whether it be they are the ones displaying aggression, or they are dealing with

someone who is being aggressive. Knowing that the reason why people are being aggressive is

because of something that just happened, can help me understand that they are reacting to

something and not purposefully being aggressive. Understanding this can help me, and other

officers, to try and de-escalate an aggressive situation rather than using aggression. De-escalating
a situation is better because it makes sure that everyone is safe and we do not run the risk of

making the situation worse by antagonizing the suspect.

When researching this topic, there were a couple of things that really stuck out to me and

I found very interesting. The first was that the hypothalamus had a part to play in aggression. I

knew that the hypothalamus regulated homeostasis but I did not think about how it would be a

part of aggression. The next thing that surprised me was the study done by B. Ariel where she,

and her other researchers, compared the number of assaults on officers who were or were not

wearing body-worn cameras. I thought that the police officers who were wearing body-worn

cameras would have had less assaults but this study was one of the outliers. There have been

many other studies that have shown that body-worn cameras reduce assaults on and by officers.

If someone in the criminal justice field were to read this paper, it could help them by explaining

why someone is being aggressive. Knowing that people are reacting to a stressor or some other

situation and that is the reason why they are being aggressive, will help officers understand that

de-escalating a situation is better than using aggression.

 Pictures

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2
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