PSY220H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Social Learning Theory, Observational Learning, Longitudinal Study

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY220H1
• Professor: Ashley Waggoner Denton

Document Summary

Aggression is behaviour that is intended to harm another individual: emotional/hostile aggression: inflicting harm for harms sake. Instrumental goal: inflicting harm as a means to another end. Nature: evolution wise, there are clear benefits for being aggressive (access to resources, higher status, more mates). Men tend to be more physically aggressive, but women are more emotionally aggressive. But cooperation has equal benefits in terms of evolution. Biological factors: there is some evidence that people can be genetically predisposed to aggressive behaviour, but environment crucial for those genes to be activated. (access to daily family meals= gene not activated) Testosterone: aggressive behaviour= bump up in testosterone (correalation study, third variable might be stress, increase stress increases both testosterone and aggression) Serotonin: increase in serotonin = decrease in aggression (correlation study) Menopause (decrease in serotonin) = decrease in serotonin and increase in aggression. Intermittent explosive disorder= road rage=> lined to low serotonin levels.