PSY220H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Konrad Lorenz, Prefrontal Cortex
Document Summary
Sigmund freud in vienna and konrad lorenz, an animal behaviour expert, in germany: instinct theory and evolutionary psychology, freud speculated that human aggression springs from a self-destructive impulse. It redirects toward others the energy of a primitive death urge (the death instinct): lorenz saw aggression as adaptive rather than self-destructive, both agreed that aggression is instinctive behaviour (unlearned and universal). Alcohol also predisposes people to interpret normal acts (such as a bump in a crowd) as provocations: hormonal influences appear much stronger in lower animals than in humans. But human aggressiveness does correlate with the male sex hormone, testosterone: increased testosterone = increased risk for aggressive behavior, especially for men since they have higher testosterone levels than females. 2: displaced aggression is most likely when the target shares some similarity to the instigator and does some minor irritating act that unleashes the displaced aggression.
