General Aggression Model (GAM)

The General Aggression Model (GAM) is a theory of social psychology exploring the nature, roots, evaluation, and potential management of human aggression. Aggression is a complex concept most broadly defined as any behavior intended to harm to others. It has been linked to many personal and social problems including bullying, domestic violence, bigotry, terrorism, and war. Around the early 2000s, theorists developed the GAM to combine numerous prior studies of aggression. The GAM is notable for its emphasis on the importance of personality in aggressive behavior but also examines a wide range of other personal, circumstantial, biological, and social factors that can cause people to act aggressively or non-aggressively.

Background

Aggression is widely considered one of the most powerful and impactful forces in the human dynamic. However, in social psychology, aggression is a difficult concept to define. One of the broadest and most common psychological definitions is that aggression is intentionally harmful behavior. A person who acts aggressively means to bring some detriment to others by that action.

By stipulating that aggression is intentional, this definition excludes cases of accidental harm, such as most sports injuries and automobile accidents. It also excludes many behaviors that are often termed “aggressive” in society, such as overly persistent salespeople or automobile drivers who take unnecessary risks to move faster or get ahead of other traffic. These sorts of acts are classified as more “assertive” than aggressive because they do not necessarily intend any harm to others, only benefit to oneself.

So too does this definition exclude situations such as people acting out in frustration by yelling or punching a wall, as long as these actions are not targeted at harming or intimidating others. Meanwhile, psychologists may disagree on the level of true aggression involved in acts such as soldiers opposing one another in wartime, which may have many motivations besides the desire to do personal harm to others.

In everyday speaking, many people use words such as “aggression” and “violence” interchangeably. However, among social psychologists, these concepts are not always related. While most or all acts of violence are examples of aggression, many acts of aggression are not violent. Violence is classified as physical aggression, while other types of aggression take nonphysical forms. These may include verbal aggression, such as yelling at, cursing at, or insulting others. Aggression may also take less-obvious social forms such as relational aggression, in which the aggressor attempts to harm victims through mean-spirited jokes, manipulation, malicious criticisms, or hurtful rumors.

Overview

Advances in psychology as well as increased interest in the interpersonal workings of humans led to a surge of interest in aggression during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Many theorists sought to identify the nature and roots of aggression to reduce its role in society and thus potentially decrease problems such as international conflicts, abusive relationships, bigotry, school violence, and terrorism.

Theorists from many fields explored aggression from multiple angles. Some considered aggression to be a possibly ingrained facet of human nature itself, activated by instinct and impulse. Others viewed aggression as a result of various personal and social frustrations. Still other theorists approached aggression as a trait that people may learn from experience with and observation of aggressive people. Studies of aggression appeared in many major theories, including the social learning theory and social interaction theory.

Theorists such as Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman sought a unifying theory to bring together and explore these different facets of aggression. Their work resulted in the General Aggression Model (GAM) in the early 2000s. The GAM is distinguished from most other theories by its emphasis on personality factors that may be related to aggression along with biological, developmental, cognitive, and social factors.

Contemporaneous studies of human personality traits helped to inform the creation of the GAM. Psychologists have long attempted to create a definitive list of traits as well as methods of evaluating these traits in individuals. By the end of the twentieth century, researchers had identified roughly five main aspects of the human personality, often called the big five. These include agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. According to the GAM, each aspect of personality has a unique interplay with an individual’s likelihood of aggression.

People who tend toward aggression usually rate low in the agreeableness scale, which refers to a person’s desire and ability to get along with others in a positive way. Aggressive people also usually rate lower on extroversion, or outgoing social behavior; conscientiousness, or controlled, goal-oriented behavior; and openness, or willingness to accept new ideas, feelings, and behaviors. Meanwhile, people who rate higher in neuroticism—meaning they are more likely to experience psychological distress and other problems—generally saw higher levels of aggression, as they seek to take out their negative feelings on others.

The GAM does not stop with personality, however, and acknowledges that a wide range of other factors may also influence aggression. These factors may be categorized differently. One such categorization is by proximate or distal levels.

The proximate level includes personal and situational factors, including a person’s character traits, experiences, beliefs, and feelings, as well as that person’s immediate circumstances. In some cases, these factors vary widely. For example, even the most peaceful people may be driven to violence in times of serious emotional duress, while those prone to aggression may act for the good of others in certain situations. Every proximate experience contributes to an individual’s larger understanding of aggression and patterns of aggressive or nonaggressive behavior.

Meanwhile, the distal level includes broader and more complex factors including an individual’s biological makeup and overall social and environmental circumstances. These factors help to develop a foundation of aggression or nonaggression that can change a person’s behavior regardless of proximate factors. For example, if a person is raised in an aggressive environment—for example, with abusive parents or parents who espouse hateful ideas—that person is more likely to become aggressive. Media, cultural, and national factors also play into the distal level, and theorists often examine these to explore the roots of large-scale aggression such as war, terrorism, and oppression.

Bibliography

Allen, Johnie J., Craig A. Anderson, Brad J. Bushman. “The General Aggression Model.” Current Opinion in Psychology, Vol. 19 (Feb. 2018), pp. 75–80

Anderson, Craig A., and Brad J. Bushman. “Human Aggression.” Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 2002, pp. 27–51.

Anderson, Craig A., Douglas A. Gentile, and Katherine E. Buckley. Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Barlett, Christopher P. and Craig A. Anderson. Examining Media Effects: The General Aggression and General Learning Models. Gettysburg College / Blackwell Publishing, 2013.

Bucolo, Donald. “Violent Video Game Exposure and Physical Aggression in Adolescence: Tests of the General Aggression Model.” University of New Hampshire Doctoral Dissertations, 2010, scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/583. Accessed 13 Jan. 2020.

Cavalcanti, Jaqueline Gomes and Carlos Eduardo Pimentel. “Personality and Aggression: A Contribution of the General Aggression Model.” Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas), 33(3) (July–Sept. 2016).

Gómez-Leal, Raquel, et al. "Personal Risk and Protective Factors Involved in Aggressive Behavior." Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol. 37, no 3-4, 2022.

Jhangiani, Rajiv, Hammond Tarry, and Charles Stangor. Principles of Social Psychology, 1st International Edition. BC Campus, 2011.

Pettigrew, Thomas F. “Contextual Social Psychology: Reanalyzing Prejudice, Voting, and Intergroup Contact.” American Psychological Association, 2020.