Question

1. Name and briefly describe two of the many possible explanations for people's aggression and hatred.

2. Which explanation makes the most sense to you?

3. Why?

4. What are the weaknesses of this approach?

Answer 1

Psychological approaches to aggression explain various external factors like social and environmental conditions that may pull an individual to aggress.

FRUSTRATION - AGGRESSION HYPOTHESIS

This is one the earliest theories developed by Dollard and Miller, 1939. According to them, frustration results from interfering or blocking the attainment of goal. According to frustration-aggression hypothesis, frustration will always elicit the motive to aggress and all aggression is caused by frustration. The theory states that the more will be the frustration, the more the resulting aggression.

According to Dollard and Miller, motive to aggress is psychological in nature that resembles physiological drive like hunger drive, so frustration elicits an aggressive drive.

In situations where aggression cannot be expressed against the source of frustration, then the aggression is displaced on to other safer channels who are easily accessible and less threatening, this is termed as displaced aggression.

This theory has overstated the frustration-aggression connection and thus suffered from many criticisms:

1. There are many examples in which aggression is not always the result of frustration. For example in case of soldiers and hired killers.

2. Research shows that frustration increases aggression but not always. Burnstein and Worchel, 1962 conducted an experiment in which a confederate disrupted a group's problem solving because of malfunctioning of his hearing aid, this frustration lead to irritation but not aggression.

3. Most research also concluded that the idea of displacement is a myth (Bushman 2002, Green & Quanty 1997).

This theory was further revised by Berkowitz (1986) and stated that frustration produces anger, an emotional readiness to aggress, but aggression occurs only when there are appropriate aggressions eliciting cues in the environment. These cues are aspects of those situations that draw actor's attention to the possibility of an aggressive response.

GENERAL AGGRESSION MODEL

This was a model under the social learning perspective. According to this model, a chain of events that can eventually lead to overt aggressive behaviour can be initiated by two major input variables:

1) Situational factors (example scolding by boss)

2) Personal factors (example: hostility, irritability)

These can lead t aggressive behaviour through their impact on 3 basic processes:

a) arousal- they may increase the physiological arousal

b) Affective states- they can arouse hostile feelings towards others

c) Cognitions- they can push individuals have hostile thoughts.

This model also helps to understand the complex processes through which input variables such as violent media can lead to aggressive behavior. Repeated exposure like this can strengthen individual’s beliefs, attitudes, schemas and scripts relevant to aggression. Once these knowledge structures related to aggression gets strengthens it becomes easier for the individual to get activated by personal or social variables and it results in impulsive actions.

The General Aggression Model is the recent mode and thus provides an accurate view of human nature.