Aggression I - Origins and Moderators

Table of Contents
Define Aggression............................................................................................................................................... 1
Intent..........................................................................................................................................................................1
Affective and Instrumental Aggression......................................................................................................................1

Origins: Motivation to aggression........................................................................................................................ 1

De Quervain et al., 2004, Science..............................................................................................................................1
Caudate signalled ‘intention to trust’...................................................................................................................2
De Quervain Findings............................................................................................................................................2

Origins: The Aggressive Unconscious................................................................................................................... 2

Psychodynamic..........................................................................................................................................................2
Eros:.......................................................................................................................................................................2
Thanatos:...............................................................................................................................................................2
Jung’s Shadow:......................................................................................................................................................2

Origins: Learning to Aggress................................................................................................................................ 2

Social Learning Theory:.........................................................................................................................................3

Origins: You and I, per early psychology…............................................................................................................ 3

Awareness..................................................................................................................................................................3
Existential ‘Bad Faith’............................................................................................................................................3
Bad Faith: Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno...........................................................................................................4
1. Impersonal identity......................................................................................................................................4
2. Authoritarianism..........................................................................................................................................4
3. Destruction..................................................................................................................................................4

Origins: Evolution................................................................................................................................................ 4
Evolutionary basis for aggression..............................................................................................................................4

Origins: Genetics................................................................................................................................................. 5
Behavioural genetics basis for aggression.................................................................................................................5

Origins: Neurobiology of Aggression.................................................................................................................... 5

Brain regions..............................................................................................................................................................5
The Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC).......................................................................................................5

Origins: Testosterone.......................................................................................................................................... 6
Sex hormone..............................................................................................................................................................6
 In Utero Testosterone Exposure and Aggression (Reinisch, 1981, Science).........................................................6

2D:4D................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Lower 2D:4D ratio (as seen in men) correlates with:.................................................................................................7
Higher 2D:4D ratios (as seen in women) correlate with............................................................................................7

Situational Triggers: The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis................................................................................7

Situational Triggers of Aggression.............................................................................................................................7
1. Context.........................................................................................................................................................8
2. Priming.........................................................................................................................................................8
3. Culture.........................................................................................................................................................8
4. Threat and Agression...................................................................................................................................9

Kurt Lewin Push and Pull Forces: B = (P, E)........................................................................................................... 9

Psychological Conflicts...............................................................................................................................................9
Frustration – Aggression hypothesis...................................................................................................................10
Triggered Displaced Aggression..............................................................................................................................10
E.g., Pederson et al., 2000...................................................................................................................................10
E.g. Narcissism and Noise blasts.........................................................................................................................10

Emotion and Motivation................................................................................................................................... 10

Anger is Approach....................................................................................................................................................10
5. More Anger ...........................................................................................................................................10

Define Aggression
- Any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another person or persons (or
any living thing)
- Harm can be physical or psychological

Intent
- Aggression requires an intention to harm
o Can be a deliberate action or a deliberate failure to act
- Violence: Acts of aggression with more severe consequences

Affective and Instrumental Aggression

- Social psychologists distinguish between two types of aggression
 1. Affective aggression: Harm-seeking done to another person that is elicited in
response to some negative emotion
2. Instrumental aggression: Harm-seeking done to another person that serves some

Origins: Motivation to aggression

Trust game:
- 1 round: Investor (P1) can give $ to trustee (P2)
o $ increases
- Trustee can give back some (investor profits) or none
- ‘Rational’ choice = Invest $0 (trustee should never
return money)
o Actual = Invest $
 Trustee returns profit

De Quervain et al., 2004, Science

- Previously: Striatal activation during Trust Game
o Trustee caudate activated after investee trust behavior

Caudate signalled ‘intention to trust’

- Caudate activation = learned trust as reward
- Donating and observing donation to charity
also activates striatum

De Quervain Findings
Investor inflict punishment = caudate activation

- Punishment feels rewarding…!

Origins: The Aggressive Unconscious
Psychodynamic
Eros:
o Freud’s term for what he proposed is the human inborn instinct to seek pleasure
and to create

Thanatos:
o Freud’s term for what he proposed is the human inborn instinct to aggress and to
destroy
o Thano’s urge -> Displacement and Catharsis

Jung’s Shadow:
o the dark side of personality, can be positive, but is mostly negative because it is
the hidden and unwanted part of ourselves

Projection
o And the destruction of things embodying those unwanted aspects

Origins: Learning to Aggress

- Behavioralist Counter to psychodynamics
- When aggressive actions result in desired attention, specific rewards, or alleviating
negative feelings, they become more likely.
- Aggressive actions can create dissonance, which leads to attitude shifts that justify
actions.

Social Learning Theory:

o People learn by watching the actions of others (Bandura, 1973).
o RECALL: BOBO doll study

Opposite of catharsis or displacement!

Origins: You and I, per early psychology…
Humanist – existentialist

Awareness
Existence is a bummer

o Existence unmoored from meaning

o Religious authority undermined
- However, we aware!
o This capability and struggle for meaning
elevates and unites us
o ‘Know Thyself’

Existential ‘Bad Faith’

- Escape from the dilemma of existence
o Don’t worry about the meaning of life
o Don’t try to think for yourself
o Don’t examine your life; do what society, convention, peers, etc., tell you to do.
- Living in bad faith: ignoring the existential questions and ignoring our moral imperative

Bad Faith: Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno

- Escape from the angst of freedom

1. Impersonal identity
- Conform to a social ideal
- Removes the burden of choice

2. Authoritarianism
- Submission to external power
- Nietzsche's herd mentality

3. Destruction
o The source of angst is the world
o Eliminate that world
Origins: Evolution
Evolutionary basis for aggression
(e.g. Daly & Wilson, 1996; 2005; Hobart,, 1991):

• Male aggressors more likely to obtain resources and attract mates through higher
status, thereby increasing odds of reproductive success.

• Females from an evolutionary perspective protect offspring and therefore use indirect
means.

• Social animals can coordinate against other groups

o Violent takeover of territory

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7XuXi3mqYM

• Increased aggression found in step families.

o Children younger than 2 years 100 times more likely to suffer lethal abuse in
hands of step parent than genetic parent even controlling for several factors.

Origins: Genetics
Behavioural genetics basis for aggression
(e.g. Coccaro et al., 1997; Miles & Carey, 1997; Hines & Saudino, 2002):

• E.g., identical twins show greater overlap in aggression and irritability than fraternal
twins or siblings.

• However, twin studies reveal overlap in physical, but not relational aggression.

• Meta-analysis suggests that genetic factors account for an important portion of the
variance in aggression.
Origins: Neurobiology of Aggression
- Research confirms physiological mechanisms involved in the detection of social threat,
the experience of anger, and engaging in aggressive behavior.

Brain regions
• Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC): Detection of social threat; unjustified
wrongdoings

• Hypothalamus and amygdala: Anger and fear

The Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC)

- This brain area is active when people detect actions and outcomes that interfere with
their goals, including social threats.

See frustration  aggression link (later)

Fight or Flight
o The hypothalamus and the amygdala are two brain regions that play a key role
in people’s emotional experiences of fear and anger and prepare them for a fight-
or-flight response.
o Adrenaline (epinephrine) and Noradrenaline (norepinephrine)
Impulse Regulation
o The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex help regulate
impulses, share connections with the limbic system, and contain serotonin
receptors.

Origins: Testosterone
Sex hormone
- Development of primary and secondary male sex characteristics
- About ~10 times higher concentration in men
- Link with aggression is complex
o Mostly a positive relationship, however
 - Role in control and inhibition of aggression and sexuality

• Best description:

o Energizer; accentuates existing behavioral tendencies

In Utero Testosterone Exposure and Aggression

(Reinisch, 1981, Science)
o Aggressive Approach Coping in kids whose mother had testosterone therapy for
pregnancy complications
 Control=boy more aggressive
 testosterone therapy = Boys still more aggressive, girls are as aggressive
as normal boys
 Boy toys are preferred by girls

• Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and “Boy Toys:” In Utero Testosterone and Active
Play Preferences

o (Berenbaum & Hines, 1992, Psychological Science)

2D:4D
• Typical male = low 2D4D ratio -> Index shorter than ring finger

• Typical female =more equal

Lower 2D:4D ratio (as seen in men) correlates with:

• good visual and spatial performance (Bull et al., 2010)

• athletic achievement (Tester and Campbell 2007)

• dominance and masculinity (Neave et al. 2003)

• sensation seeking and psychoticism (Austin et al. 2002)

Higher 2D:4D ratios (as seen in women) correlate with

• verbal fluency (Manning 2002)

• emotional problems (Williams et al. 2003)

 • neuroticism (Austin et al. 2002)

Situational Triggers:
The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
Original version: Aggression is always preceded by frustration, and that frustration inevitably
leads to aggression (Dollard et al., 1939)

• Revised to suggest that frustration produces an emotional readiness to aggress (Harris,

1974)

- The hypothesis has received cross-cultural support.

Situational Triggers of Aggression

1. Context
2. Priming
3. Culture
4. Physical threat
5. Psychological conflict

1. Context
Temperature and aggressive behaviour

As temperature increase, it has addictive effect on aggression in ball players

2. Priming
Situational cues which prime hostile concepts and feelings can lead to aggression.

- Weapons effect: The tendency for the presence of firearms to increase the likelihood of
aggression, especially when people are frustrated.

The Weapons Effect

• Berkowitz and LePage’s (1967) classic weapons effect study shows that participants
became the most aggressive when they were in a condition in which they were both
angered and in the presence of a gun and a rifle, administering an especially large number
of shocks to another person.
The Weapons Effect and Gun Ownership
• For some people (e.g., sport hunters), guns are not cues to aggression, but most
Americans are not recreational hunters.

• Gun-related homicides occur at a much higher rate in the United States than in other
industrialized nations.

• Switzerland???

3. Culture
- Culture influences the extent of aggression within a society.
o Among national cultures
o United States: Murder rate is double the world average; aggression used to solve
interpersonal conflict; availability of firearms; individualistic
o No single set of variables that accounts for a given nation’s violence record.

• Within nations

o Culture of honor, especially in United States South and West

 Status protection
 e.g Northerner vs southerners when someone bump into them
o Gangs

4. Threat and Agression

Physical: Attack
• Perception of imminent, intentional physical or verbal attack is the most reliable
provocation of an aggressive response.

• Fight or Flight system

Psychological conflict
• Psychological: Insult and social rejection

• Insults and social rejection can arouse anger and the impulse to aggress to protect self-
esteem.
 • People high in rejection sensitivity tend to expect, readily perceive, and
overreact to rejection with aggressive responses.

• Narcissism and unstable self-esteem…

Kurt Lewin
Push and Pull Forces: B = (P, E)
Psychological Conflicts
• Drives towards things we want (Approach) and drives away from things we don’t want
(Avoid)

• Drives can conflict

- Approach-Avoidance Conflict
o RECALL: Key motives lecture and conflicts

• Drives can be blocked

Frustration – Aggression hypothesis

• Aggression after frustration has utility

o Can help remove the block or obstacle

o Not always appropriate, however

- Displaced aggression is directed toward a target other than the source of one’s
frustration.
- Triggered displaced aggression occurs when someone does not respond to an initial
frustration but later responds more aggressively than would be warranted to a second
event.

Triggered Displaced Aggression

E.g., Pederson et al., 2000
- Provocation vs no provocation
o If no initial provacation and face another frustration = agreesive
 E.g. Narcissism and Noise blasts
Cyberball reject vs accept
• Dependent Variable : Noise blasts

o Max 105 db (lawn mower or motorcycle loud)

• Narcissism and rejection  increased dACC and increased noise blast

Emotion and Motivation

Anger is Approach avoidance Approach

• Anger is clearly negative sad happy

anxious excited
• People don’t like it fearful interested
angry calm
5. More Anger 
• Activate Left PFC

• More Approach personality

• More Reward sensitivity