PSY 2110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Contract Killing, Prefrontal Cortex, Ethology
27 Apr 2018
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CHAPTER 12: INTERPERSONAL AGGRESSION
AGGRESSION
•Any physical or verbal behaviour that is intended to harm another person or persons (or any living thing).
•Males are more physically aggressive, females are more relationally aggressive - however, equal on avg
•Different from assertiveness: stand up for your rights / advocate for yourself
•Different from hostility: A negative, antagonistic attitude towards another person or group (can lead to
aggression but not always)
•Role of intention: intends to harm but doesn’t succeed, still considered an aggressive act
•Physiology of aggression
dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) detects social threat and alerts us when there’s conflict
between our expectations and the situation
insults for example activate dACC because there’s conflict with how we think we should be treated
hypothalamus and amygdala involved in emotional experiences of fear and anger - elicit aggressive
behaviour
when faced with a threat, hypothalamus activates and prepares for flight or fight
amygdala responds to threats generating fear or anger
fear - behaviour is avoidance / flight
anger - behaviour is aggression / fight
•Natural Born Pacifists
those who are likely to aggress risk getting a bad reputation
people who are overly aggressive—either by physically attacking others or by trying to damage others’
peer relationships—increase their chances of being rejected by their peers in the future, if not imprisoned
natural selection may have shaped the human mind to forgive valued relationship partners despite the
harm they have caused us
•Unique Human Aspects of Aggression
When two members of the same species fight, they almost never kill each other. Over the course of
evolution, these species have developed strategies to avoid unnecessary injury.
animals are very good at gauging each other’s physical strength and fighting ability. Once one
animal has clearly dominated the other, the loser assumes a subordinate position
Other species have natural controls that restrain violence before it gets out of hand, humans seem
to have far fewer doubts about killing each other.
Human mind specializes in self-control - we don’t act on every aggressive impulse that we experience.
These impulses are regulated by regions of our prefrontal cortex
ORIGINS OF AGGRESSION: ETHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
•Freud
Eros: the inborn instinct to seek pleasure and to create that motivate people
Thanatos: human inborn instinct to aggress and destroy
•Ethology: study of animal behaviour in its natural context
aggression is triggered by perception that others are making one’s life difficult
anger displays discourage others who might challenge their status
if not effective then aggression is a way to reinforce the message, reducing probability rhat others
will repeat their harmful actions
•Comparative psychology
there’s a shared, innate psychological mechanism for aggression
1) When resources are threatened
2) To protect offspring
3) Competition over social status
ORIGINS OF AGGRESSION: GENES / BIOCHEMICAL INFLUENCES
•Behaviour Genetics
study of the relative contributions of genes and the environment on the variations in human behaviour,
used to determine if we inherit any aggressive tendencies
•Twin studies: identical twins show more similarity with aggression than fraternal
•Adoption studies: more similar to biological parents in terms of aggression
•50% of differences among people in terms of aggression can be attributed to genes
•Testosterone
higher testosterone = more aggressive (females and males)
causation can go both ways - when people are aggressive, their testosterone goes up
primes dominance motivation (correlations stronger in situations involving provocation)
Affective (Hostile) Aggression
Instrumental Aggression
Definition
Harm-seeking done to another person that is elicited in
response to some negative emotion with a goal to
cause pain
Harm- seeking done to another person that serves
some goal other than causing pain
Motivation
strong affective, or emotional, state, “hot”
achieving a goal, “cold”
Characteristic
often impulsive, emotional outburts but can be delayed
and calculated, mostly about social hierarchy or
protection of self-esteem
calculated
Examples
murders, assaults, damage property
contract killing, terrorism, war
