Aggression

• TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Biological bases of behavior; Emotion; Personality; Psychopathology

Aggression is an emotional response to frustration that often leads to angry and destructive actions directed against individuals, animals, or such organizations as corporate bureaucracies, social and religious groups, or governments.

Introduction

Aggression, as the term is applied to humans, occurs as an emotional reaction to dissatisfaction and stress, and it can result in behaviors that society considers antagonistic and destructive. The term as used in common parlance has broad meanings and applications. In psychological parlance, however, aggression generally refers to an unreasonable hostility directed against situations with which people must cope or think they must cope. On a simple and relatively harmless level, people may demonstrate momentary aggressive behavior if they experience common frustrations such as missing a bus, perhaps reacting momentarily by stamping their foot on the ground or mouthing a curse subvocally. The moment passes, and no one is hurt by this sort of aggression, which most people demonstrate with fair frequency as they deal with frustration in their daily lives.

People with tattered self-images may direct their aggression toward themselves, possibly in the form of expressing or thinking disparaging things about themselves or, in extreme cases, harming themselves physically, even to the point of suicide. Such internalized forms of aggression may remain pent-up for years in people who bear their frustrations silently. Such frustrations may eventually erupt into dangerous behavior directed at others, leading to assaults, verbal or physical abuse, and, in the most extreme cases, to massacres. Such was the case when Timothy McVeigh planted a bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, as an act of civil protest, killing 167 people, none of whom he knew.

Infants and young children make their needs known and have them met by crying or screaming, which usually brings them attention from whoever is caring for them. Older children, basing their actions on these early behaviors, may attempt to have their needs met by having tantrums, or uncontrolled fits of rage, in an effort to achieve their ends. In some instances, adults who are frustrated, through regression to the behaviors of infancy or early childhood, have tantrums that, while disconcerting, frequently fail to succeed in anything more than emphasizing their social immaturity. Socialization demands that people learn how to control their overt expressions of rage and hostility.

Types of Aggression

Hugh Wagner, a behavioral psychologist concerned with the biology of aggression, has identified three types of aggression: offensive aggression, defensive aggression, and predatory aggression. Offensive aggression occurs when the aggressor initiates aggressive behavior against one or more nonaggressors. The response to offensive aggression is likely to be defensive aggression that generally takes the form of self-defense.

Predatory aggression differs from offensive or defensive aggression, although it is basically a form of offensive aggression. It is characterized by such phenomena as the lurking of predatory animals that make themselves as inconspicuous as possible until their prey is within striking distance. They then pounce on the prey with the intention of killing it as quickly as they can so that they can eat it. Among humans, hunters are examples of predatory aggressors, although not all contemporary hunters consume their prey.

Biological Roots of Aggression

Although aggressive acts are usually triggered by environmental factors, laboratory research suggests that aggression has biological roots. Various experiments point to the fact that the three basic types of aggression are controlled by different mechanisms in the midbrain. It has been demonstrated in laboratory animals that offensive aggression has intimate connections to neurons in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain. When lesions occur in this section of the brain, offensive aggression decreases markedly or disappears altogether, although defensive and predatory aggression are not affected.

Conversely, when parts of the anterior hypothalamus are stimulated, offensive behavior increases and attack may ensue. The brain appears in these experiments to be programmed in such a way that defensive aggression is controlled by the periaqueductal gray matter (PAG) found in the midbrain. So specialized are the neural activities of the midbrain that defensive aggression involving perceived threats emanates from a different part of the brain than does defensive aggression that involves an actual attack. Acid-based amino neurons from the medial hypothalamus are known to trigger defensive aggression.

Alcoholic intake often intensifies aggressive behavior because alcohol reduces the inhibitions that the cerebral cortex controls while stimulating the neural pathways between the medial hypothalamus and the PAG. Although alcohol does not increase aggressive behavior in all humans, many people react aggressively when they consume alcoholic beverages.

Aggression and Body Chemistry

In most species, including humans, males are more aggressive than females. This is thought to be because of the testosterone levels present in varying degrees in males. The higher the testosterone level, the more aggressive the male. Aggressive behavior that threatens the welfare of the species is often controlled in humans by medication that reduces the testosterone levels and pacifies aggressive males.

It is notable that young males tend to be considerably more aggressive than older males, presumably because as men age, their testosterone levels decrease considerably. Prisons are filled with young males unable to control their aggressions sufficiently to stay out of trouble with the law. Many of these prisoners mellow into relatively benign older men not because prison has reformed them but because their body chemistry has undergone significant changes through the years.

At one time, aggressive behavior was controlled by electric shock therapy (which is used at present in some extreme cases) or by the more drastic surgical procedure known as lobotomy. Lobotomies often left people in virtually catatonic states from which they could never emerge. Drugs and psychiatric treatment have replaced most of the more devastating procedures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Road Rage and Air Rage

Two of the most common forms of offensive aggression in contemporary society are road rage and air rage. Road rage, which generally occurs on crowded, multilane highways or freeways, is often experienced by otherwise civilized individuals who, when behind the wheel of a car that weighs well over a ton, are transformed into irrational people. If someone cuts them off in traffic, drives slowly in the lane ahead of them, or commits some other perceived roadway insult, perpetrators of road rage may bump the rear of the car ahead of them, pass the car and shoot at the offending driver, or force the offending driver off the road and onto the shoulder, where a fight, a stabbing, or a shooting may occur.

Air rage is somewhat different. Some people who have been flying for long periods in cramped conditions, often passing through several time zones, may suffer from disorientation. Often, this feeling is intensified by the consumption of alcohol before or during the flight. Such people, if refused another drink or if asked to return to their seats and buckle their seat belts, may strike out at flight attendants or at fellow passengers.

Aggression in Animals

Although humans exhibit aggression in its most subtle and complicated forms, other species of animals also manifest aggressive behaviors. Most animals will fight if they are attacked because self-defense and self-preservation are inherent in most species. Within their own social constructs, some animals will attack those outside their group, even those of the same species, although few animals turn on their own species to nearly the extent that humans do. Carnivorous animals exhibit aggressiveness in preying on other animals as food sources, the large overpowering the small, the swift overtaking the slow, the strong killing and consuming the weak. Most animals also aggressively defend the areas in which they forage and build their nests or dens.

The less aggressive species of animals, notably poultry, cattle, and fish, have been domesticated by humans as sources of food. More aggressive animals are sometimes used in sports such as bullfighting or cockfighting. In these instances, the animals are taught aggressive behaviors that are not instinctive to most of them. They are trained to perform, and satisfactory performance on their part is rooted in aggression.

Aggression and Procreation

Aggressive behavior in nearly all species is rooted in sexuality. The male is usually more aggressive than the female. The sexual act is fundamentally an act of male aggression. Males during their sexual prime maintain the high levels of testosterone that assure the continuance of their species, but that also result in aggressive, sometimes antisocial behavior.

The offensive aggression of one species, such as the predatory birds that feed on newborn turtles in the Galápagos Islands, evokes defensive aggressive behavior on the parts of those seeking to protect their young and to ensure the continuance of their species. The species that demonstrates defensive aggression in a situation of this sort may demonstrate offensive aggression in pursuing and attacking a weaker species. All of these aggressions among nonhumans are, in the final analysis, directed at preserving the species.

Can Human Aggression Be Controlled?

Aggression is so inherent in nearly every species that it is doubtful that it can ever be fully controlled, nor would it necessarily be desirable to control it. When aggression among humans reaches the point of threatening the social fabric, however, steps must be taken to control or, at least, to redirect it. The adolescent male who wants to beat everyone up probably is suffering from extreme anger. It may be possible to redirect this anger, which is a form of energy, into more socially acceptable channels. It may also be possible to control elements in the environment—home life, being bullied at school, being rejected by peers—in such ways as to reduce the anger and resentment that have led to aggressive behavior.

Patients that show aggressive behavior have poor impulsive control. Hence, behavioral therapy aims to find the cause of this aggressive behavior. Once the causes have been found, patients learn to control the impulses that lead them to act aggressively. Medication can also reduce the severity of these impulses and even stop aggression. The type of medication used to treat aggressive behavior targets neurotransmitters such as dopamine. Risperidone, for example, a medication meant to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has also been used to treat aggressive behavior in children and juveniles with aggressive behavior.

The management of aggression through psychotherapy and medication may prove effective. Aggressive individuals, however, may resist treatments that could succeed in controlling the socially unacceptable aggressive behavior in which they engage. Attempts to control aggression often run counter to the very nature of human beings as they pass through the various developmental stages of their lives.

• Key Concepts
• Anger
• Defensive aggression
• Frustration
• Hostility
• Offensive aggression
• Predatory aggression
• Regression
• Social immaturity
• Socialization
• Stress
• Tantrum

Bibliography

Anderson, Daniel R., et al. Early Childhood Television Viewing and Adolescent Behavior. Blackwell, 2001.

Archer, John, and Kevin Browne. Human Aggression: Naturalistic Approaches. Routledge, 1989.

Blanchard, Robert J., and Caroline D. Blanchard, eds. Advances in the Study of Aggression. Academic Press, 1984.

Englander, E. K. Understanding Violence. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997.

Feshbach, Seymour, and Jolanta Zagrodzka, eds. Aggression: Biological, Developmental, and Social Perspectives. Plenum, 1997.

Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Harper & Row, 1951.

Lesko, Wayne A., ed. Readings in Social Psychology: General, Classic, and Contemporary Selections. 7th ed. Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, 2009.

Lorenz, Konrad. On Aggression. Translated by Marjorie Kerr Wilson. Routledge, 2002.

Porrey, Melissa. "Aggression: What It Means and How to Manage It." Verywell Health, 21 Oct. 2024, www.verywellhealth.com/aggression-5525859. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.

Scott, John Paul. Aggression. U of Chicago P, 1958.

Wagner, Hugh. The Psychobiology of Human Motivation. Routledge, 1999.