Now people are pretty resistant to believe that behaviour like aggression is biological in nature,
preferring to think that people are aggressive at least in part because of their experiences.
Well what experaicnes make someone aggressive? In this
video on social psychological explanations of aggression we are going to cover three,
frustration aggression, social learning theory and deindividuation
Frustration-aggression
So first up is a concept thought up by researchers Dollard and Millar.
They argued that aggression is in one way or another always caused by frustration.
And this frustration happens when we are trying to complete a goal but something stops us.
Now we have all been frustrated at some point, and it's not pleasant. It is a mental tension
that tends to build up over time until you calm down or with enough frustration, snap. Now the
frustration aggression theory is a psychodynamic theory, and according to psychodynamics releasing
a strong built up emotion leads to catharsis. This is a pleasant feeling of relaxation.
Now we can't always release our feelings of frustration on whatever has caused the frustration
so there is another psychodynamic concept called displacement. Moving our aggression onto a weaker
or more available target. So perhaps the boss has sent an email ruining the plans of an employee,
the boss is too powerful and not available so the employee lashes out at his family.
Whether frustration actually turns into aggression depends on a few factors. How close someone
is to completing a goal is important, if your just about to achieve your goal and then stopped,
that's when you will be the most frustrated. People are also more likely to be aggressive
when frustrated if they have learnt from experience that the aggression isnt punished,
but actually helps them achieve their goals. So maybe a boss finds that being aggressive to his
underperforming staff doesn't get reported to HR, but it makes them work harder and
he is more likely to get his bonus. Frustration-aggression - Evaluations
The first evaluation we have is by Geen, in an interesting set up participants were asked to
complete a jigsaw puzzle. But in the room was a confederate. In one condition the confederate
was friendly, but interfered with the task, frustrating the participant. In a second
condition the confederate didn't interfere, but did insult the intelligence of the participant.
And in a third control group the confederates didn't insult or interfere. In the second part
of the study the participants took part in a task in which they needed to shock the confederate.
The results do support the idea that if we are frustrated that will result in aggression
as the frustrated group shocked the friendly but frustrating confederate more than the control
group. But it's only partial support and the verbally attacked group gave the highest shocks.
We could criticise Geen’s study on the basis of it being set in a lab and the possibility
of demand charcitersitics that come with it. And a nice counter study is a pretty funny field
experiment by Harris. Harris very simply sent research students to act as confederates and push
into real cues. Either near the front, two from the front or near the back, at least 11 people
before them. The confederates then rated the aggression level of the person immediately behind
them based on verbal and physical aggression. And it was found that increasing frustration
by blocking goal-directed behaviour closer to the goal produces more aggression. Shout out to those
research students, I really don't think I would have had the guts to take part in that study.
But a final criticism, there is distinct variability in how resistant individuals
are in getting frustrated, or even letting that frustration turn into aggression.
And for that matter plenty of people who perform acts of serious aggression when not frustrated.
So the cold blooded killer who murders a stranger. Or the solder who kills in warfare as part of
their profession. And the idea of aggression providing catharsis is pretty questionable
as people who are aggressive tend to be aggressive frequently and many people
are never aggressive. So it seems letting the aggression out isn't really chilling them out.
Social learning theory If you remember approaches well.
this one should be pretty straightforward, afterall you learnt social learning theory
in the context of aggression with banduras work, that we will use as an evaluation.
But as a reminder. Social learning theorists agree with behaviorists that we learn from
experience. But they take an extra step, suggesting that we don't just learn from our
own direct reinforcement and punishment but from observing, and imitating role models behavior.
So with that in mind, we will imitate the aggressive behaviour we see in our role models
if we see that role model gets some sort of reward for that aggression,
a concept called vicarious reinforcement. But on the flip side of that we are less
likely to imitate the models if we see them punished for that aggression.
Imitation is also more likely if we identify with the role model. If the person we see being
aggressive is attractive, high status and similar to the observer's demographics, so age and gender.
If we do identify with the role model then the aggressive behaviour
they model is much more likely to be imitated. But of course not all aggressive behaviour can
be modeled. The observer needs to have some level of confidence that they can actually successfully
imitate the aggression they observe, this is their level of self efficacy. This is likely to
be higher if the observer has been aggressive in the past and thats worked out for them.
And as its social learning theory aggression we observe will only turn into imitation
if the four cognitive mediating factors apply, so we have to pay attention,
we have to retain, or remember how to do it, and we need to be able to reproduce and we need to
have sufficient motivation to want to imitate. But we don't need to see an immediate aggressive
response in the observer after watching their model, they can internalise,
storing that aggressive observed behaviour until just the moment that its needed.
Social learning theory - Evaluations Okay, its social learning theory, its
aggression, Bandura is certainly going to be our evaluation here.
Hopefully you remember the basics, In the Bobo doll study children observed adults being
aggressive with a blow up doll. The adults hit and kicked the bobo doll. And when the
children were placed in a separate room with a range of toys, those children who had seen
the aggressive modeling were aggressive themselves, the control group who didn't
see aggression were not aggressive. A great support of the ideas of social learning theory,
not only that but the results also support the idea of identification with the little boys more
likely to imitate males and the girls the females. In a study looking at how media can influence
aggressive behaviour through social learning processes Williams observed childrens play
in rural town in canada before and after the introduction of TV in the 80’s. She found that
both physical and verbal aggressive behaviour increased significantly. Williams suggests the
children were imitating the aggression of symbolic models, characters they had watched on TV.
Deindividuation Our final social psychological explanation is
de-individuation. This the idea that when we are in a large crowd, or when our identity is hidden,
that we lose our sense of self, our idea of our self as individuals. Festinger claims that this
feeling turns into a loss of control, we will then be more easily led by the group we are a part of,
even if that group's behavior becomes aggressive. Deindividuation can also be caused by,
or increased by the use of masks, uniforms and darkness.
So what is the reason for this? Well it's hard to be identified in a crowd,
you don't know the people around you, they don't know you and you will never meet them again. Your
anonymous, any feelings of personal responsibility and guilt fade away knowing people are not judging
you as a person, this is a reduction in public self-awareness. Ultimately feel you won't be
held responsible for your actions, and that makes it easier to go along with the crowd.
We are also so much focused on the crowd's actions, we don't reflect on our own principles
and morality, this is how we would like to see ourselves, our private self-awareness.
Losing the sense of our own individual values makes us more easily follow the group's behavior.
Deindividuation - Evaluations I’m going to evaluate deindividuation with
Zimbardo, no not the prison study, I know you may be tempted to use that with the uniforms and the
high levels of aggression, but really I dont think it works too well. They spent a number of days
together and the denidiviation aspect is minimal. Instead there is a less famous study in which
Zimbardo used groups of four female participants and got them to shock a learner in a similar setup
to milgram's study. Now this study was designed to really test deindividuation.
In one condition the group was completely deindividuated, they were not introduced to
the other participants and didn't speak, they were given oversized lab coats and had hoods
with eye holes placed over their heads, so they were completely unidentifiable. The other group
were introduced by name as they entered the room and were given oversized name badges.
Zimbardo did find that deindividuation increased aggression,
with the deindividuated participants shocking for twice as long as the individuated participants.
Another study we can use is super weird and wouldn't have a chance of being carried out today.
Gergan used groups of eight participants and took them one at a time to a small padded room,
participants were not introduced to each other but told that there were no rules at
all on what they could do for their hour in the room. There were two conditions,
in one condition the room was fully lit, in the second the room was in complete darkness.
The researchers listened in with microphones and watched with infra red cameras.
In the light room condition, the strangers generally all just had a very awkward hour,
some talking but no intentional physical contact.
The dark room was very different. 90% of the participants intentionally touched
other people in the room with 50% of participants going as far as hugging.
Now thats all the details you need to know for the exam, but reading the paper this study got
weird, full of examples of deep emotional conversations, and people crawling over each
other in a pile on the floor, and 80% of the dark room participants reporting sexaul excitement.
Keep in mind this is complete strangers, who have never seen each other, completely in the dark
So does this study provide evidence that deindividuation lower inhibitions,
yeah I think so. Does that automatically lead to aggression. Well no, this study is a pretty
interesting example of how deindividuation can instead lead to increased intimacy.
But the theory that deindividuation in the right conditions can lead to aggression
really does have face validity, I dont know how far in the future your watching this
but the january the 6th riots at the american congress was only a few months ago for me.
And as I was watching it I couldn't help but think, okay some of these guys
have planned for this, but honestly some of these people are normal Americans who have got carried
away with the extreme behaviour of the crowd. Not only rioters, but tribal societies have used
masks and facepaint in warfare for thousands of years, in modern times armies all use standardised
uniforms that strip away individuality. General Evaluations
So when asked a question in this area you could be asked to talk about just one social psychological
explanation of aggression, or you may be asked to talk about all social psychological explanations
in general potentially talking about all three. Before we finish I’m going to give you
three general evaluations that you can alter depending on the demands of the question.
So firstly, there are real practical applications of understanding how social factors result
in aggression. For deindividuation we can use this knowledge to design cities in which people
feel identified, so the use of CCTV and clear lighting. If we agree with social
learning theorists that aggressive models make our children more aggressive through imitation,
we may want to limit their exposure to aggressive models on TV, providing prosocial models instead,
or if they are exposed to aggressive models at home stage an intervention.
And if frustration is causing aggressive behaviour, perhaps give people the opportunity
to achieve catharsis in a way that minimises harm,
so perhaps playing aggressive computer games or sports.
One criticism we can have is the issues with how these studies were conducted. Almost all only
show short term effects under lab conditions, when we are most interested in how people in
the real world become long term aggressive criminals due to their life experiences.
These effects are hard to study over the long term in the real world because for social
learning theory the time between someone observing aggression and imitating could be a long time,
and it's difficult to objectively measure frustration and deindividuation.
And a final evaluation we can use is comparative, we have just covered biological explanations for
aggression, and there is significant evidence for a biological basis to
aggression. So social psychological is nurture, but evidence for nature can be found in genetic
and neural abnormalities, MAOA, serotonin. This evidence suggests that nurture based
explanations are not a full explanation of why people display aggressive behavior.