C82SAD Aggression and Motivation

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C82SAD Aggression and Motivation
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Aggression

• Aggression is prevalent in everyday life
• We are regularly exposed to aggressive acts or
  people, e.g.
• ? graffiti ? vandalism
• ? violent arguments ? weapons
• ? belligerent dress
• Images of violence and aggression are rife in the
  media
• ? rapes ? muggings
• ? child abuse ? assaults
• ? robberies ? terrorism
• ? wars ? gang violence
• ? hooliganism ? crowd violence
• Children are also exposed to violence at school
  (Lind Maxwell, 1986)
• Jones et al. (1994) conducted UK-wide research on
  violence and aggression and found that 20 of
  women felt unsafe when walking although only 0.7
  reported being attacked.

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Prevalence of Aggressive Acts
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What is Aggression?

• There are numerous definitions which vary from
  physical parameters (e.g., pushing, shoving,
  striking) to features relating to threatening or
  hostile acts (e.g., abusive language, facial
  expressions)
• Behaviour that results in personal injury or
  destruction of property (Bandura, 1973)
• Behaviour intended to harm another of the same
  species (Scherer et al., 1975)
• Behaviour directed towards the goal of harming
  or injuring another living being who is motivated
  to avoid such treatment (Baron Byrne, 2000)
• Behaviour directed toward another individual
  carried out with the proximate intent to cause
  harm (Anderson Huesmann, 2003)

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What is Aggression?

• Definitions have some commonality Intent to
  harm (Carlson et al., 1989)
• Measuring aggression is also challenging
  especially if the definition is vague
• Means used in previous research to measure
  aggression
• Punching a inflatable plastic doll (Bandura et
  al., 1963)
• Pushing a button to ostensibly deliver an
  electric shock (Buss, 1961)
• Pencil-and-paper ratings by teachers and
  classmates of a childs aggressiveness (Eron,
  1982)
• Self-report of prior aggressive behaviour (Leyens
  et al., 1975)
• Verbal expression of willingness to use violence
  (Geen, 1978)
• Ethical considerations in level of aggressive
  acts people can be induced to do in experiments
• The above measures are an analogue for measuring
  real aggression

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Theories of Aggression

• Psychodynamic Theory (Freud, 1930)
• Proposed distinction between death instinct
  (Thanatos) and life instinct (Eros)
• Thanatos is initially self-directed but as we
  develop it can be directed toward others
• Unifactorial (1-factor) model aggression build
  up due to unconscious, primitive conflicts and
  must be released
• Neo-Freudians view a more rational but still
  innate view of aggression basic to all animal
  species (Hartmann et al., 1949)
• Largely theoretical with little empirical support
  limited but a useful starting point

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Theories of Aggression

• Ethological Theory (Lorenz, 1966 Ardrey, 1966
  Morris, 1967)
• Ethology Branch of biology devoted to the study
  of animal behaviour among members of a species in
  their natural physical and social and environment
• Focused on an innate component to aggression as
  well as situational stimuli (releasers)
• Aggression has a survival value
• Species are naturally aggressive towards other
  members of its species so as to maintain an even
  distribution of members and resources increased
  likelihood of survival

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Theories of Aggression

• Ethological Theory (Lorenz, 1966 Ardrey, 1966
  Morris, 1967)
• No actual violence aggression is displayed
  ritualistically
• A 2-factor theory
• Innate propensity to aggress
• Situational cues give rise to aggression (or
  aggressive displays)
• Lorenz (1966) mapped this to people (fighting
  instinct)
• But criticism as to the survival value of
  aggression (e.g., people have no killing
  appendages)
• Also people can kill with ease using weapons no
  instinct

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Theories of Aggression

• Evolutionary Social Psychology (Krebs Miller,
  1985 Cosmides Tooby, 2005)
• Evolutionary social psychology Biological
  approach claiming that social behaviour is
  adaptive and helps the individual, kin, and
  species to survive
• Aggressive behaviour is adaptive in that it has
  evolved to permit the being to procreate and pass
  on genes to the next generation
• In humans, aggressive acts can increase social
  and economic advantage social advantage very
  important in sexual selection (Darwins other
  theory)

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Theories of Aggression

• Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
• (Dollard et al., 1939)
• Aggression the product of an anger response to
  the frustration of goals and desires
• Aggression directed to perceived source of
  frustration
• e.g. terrorism might be spawned by chronic and
  acute frustration over the ineffectiveness of
  other means (e.g., negotiation) to achieve
  socio-economic goals
• However, limited because frustrating events
  (e.g., job loss, refereeing decisions, traffic
  jams) lead to lots of frustration but seldom
  aggression (Berkowitz, 1993)

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Theories of Aggression

• Excitation Transfer (Zillman, 1979, 1988)
• Excitation transfer model Considers the
  expression of aggression is a function of 3
  factors
• A learned aggressive behaviour
• Arousal or excitation from another source
• The persons interpretation of the arousal state
  such that an aggressive response seems
  appropriate
• Derived from a drive model of emotion
• People misinterpret arousal from one situation
  and it is transferred to another if there is
  further arousal and an aggressive response has
  been adopted previously
• E.g. a greater tendency to shout or snap at a
  friend or partner if something else unrelated has
  annoyed us

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Theories of Aggression

• Excitation Transfer (Zillman, 1979, 1988)

Aggression
Student works out at gymnasium

• High level of excitation
• Heart rate
• Blood pressure
• Muscle tremor

Motorist takes last parking space
TIME
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Theories of Aggression

• Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977, 1997)
• Observational learning (imitation and vicarious
  experience) during childhood may contribute to
  violent actions
• Bobo doll experiments
• Bandura et al. (1961) Children watched an adult
  playing with Bobo doll (5-foot inflated plastic
  doll)
• Children exposed to the violent model displayed
  significantly more aggression toward the doll

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Theories of Aggression

• Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977, 1997)

Source Bandura Walter (1963)
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Theories of Aggression

• Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977, 1997)
• Observational learning (imitation and vicarious
  experience) during childhood may contribute to
  violent actions (Bobo doll experiments)
• Explained the social circumstances under which
  violent/aggressive acts might arise
• Factors include
• Past experience of aggressive behaviour (personal
  and observed)
• Previous success with aggressive behaviours in
  terms of fulfilling personal goals
• The expected pattern of reinforcement of
  aggression rewarded or punished?
• Psychological (e.g., personality), personal
  (e.g., verbal encouragement), and environmental
  (e.g., presence of significant others) factors
• More comprehensive that frustration-aggression
  because it charts the development and conditions
  under which aggression occurs

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Type A Personality and ADHD
• Type A personality is a behaviour pattern
• Carver and Glass (1978) found Type A people to
  act more aggressively toward people perceived to
  be competitive
• Type A people have also been found to experience
  more conflict with peers and subordinates but not
  superiors (Baron, 1989)
• ADHD is a syndrome that includes poor attention
  span, hyperactivity and poor attention control
• ADHD is predictive of aggression in children and
  adults (Hinshaw, 1987)
• Solutions lie in pharmacological control through
  medication

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Direct Provocation
• Research has shown that verbal and physical
  provocation results in people behaving
  aggressively (Geen, 1968) e.g., street fights,
  brawls in bars or sports grounds
• Reciprocity principle tendency to strike back if
  provoked mutual aggression (also in
  attraction)
• Age is a moderating influence on the link between
  provocation and aggression (Eagly Steffenm
  1986)
• Aggression in retaliation to provocation may be
  seen as self-defense and therefore adaptive

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Gender and Socialisation
• Men are more likely to engage in aggressive
  behaviour (Wrangham Peterson, 1996)
• Men are also more likely to display aggressive
  attitudes and beliefs (Eagly Chaiken, 1993)
• This may be due to
• Elevated levels of androgens (e.g., testosterone)
• Evolutionary benefit to aggression in terms of
  status and dominance
• Socialisation of aggressive tendencies during
  development

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Gender and Socialisation
• Men are more likely to engage in aggressive
  behaviour (Wrangham Peterson, 1996)
• Men are also more likely to display aggressive
  attitudes and beliefs (Eagly Chaiken, 1993)
• This may be due to
• Elevated levels of androgens (e.g., testosterone)
• Evolutionary benefit to aggression in terms of
  status and dominance
• Socialisation of aggressive tendencies during
  development

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• The Cathartic Hypothesis
• Catharsis The feeling of release after an
  emotion-expressing experience
• Often thought that aggression assists in this
  process helping express pent-up frustration
• People need to let off steam borne by
  frustration
• Research in the area is inconclusive some
  studies has shown catharsis to reduce aggression
  while others shown it actually increases (Koneçi
  Ebbesen, 1976)
• Some have suggested that the cathartic hypothesis
  is little more than a belief (Wann et al., 1999)
  and research has rejected the hypothesis
  completely Bushman et al. (1999)

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• The Cathartic Hypothesis

Angered
Not Angered
Source Bushman, Baumeister, and Stack (1999)
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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Alcohol
• Disinhibition hypothesis of alcohol detraction
  from cortical control and increases activity in
  more primitive areas
• Strong link between alcohol consumption and
  aggression (Bushman Cooper, 1990)
• Experimental studies also support this such as
  Taylor and Sears (1988) electric shock study
  using win-loss scenarios in a reaction time task
• Taylor and Sears also provided verbal
  encouragement from a confederate and found that
  this interacted with the level of shocks given
• Gustafson (1992) provided additional support but
  used provocation instead
• Implications for real life scenarios e.g. goading
  person into acting aggressively

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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Alcohol

Alcohol condition
Placebo condition
Source Taylor Sears (1988)
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Factors Influencing Aggression

• Disinhibition
• A breakdown in the learned controls (social
  forces) against behaving impulsively or
  aggressively
• Numerous ways in which people become disinhibited
  and act aggressively
• E.g. Deindividuation is one process that might
  lead to disinhibition through presence of others
  and lack of identifiability (c.f. nurse and KKK
  uniform study Johnson Downing, 1979)
• Examples of deindividuation, disinhibition, and
  aggression
• My Lai incident in Vietnam war (Hersh, 1970
• Manns (1981) study of baiting behaviour by
  crowds in suicides in 1960s and 1970s

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Factors Influencing Aggression
Deindividuation

• Night time
• Large crowd
• Distant from victim

• Anonymity
• Low concern
• for victim

Baiting Behaviour
Aggression

• Irritability
• Frustration

• Long wait

Source Based on Mann (1981)
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Situational Factors

• Physical environment Heat and crowding
• Research has shown a link between temperature (or
  hotter than normal conditions) and
• Domestic violence (Cohn, 1993)
• Violent suicide (Maes et al., 1994
• Collective violence (Carlsmith Anderson, 1979)
• Aggravated assault (Harries Stadler, 1983)
• Motorists honking in traffic! (Kenrick
  MacFarlane, 1986)
• Aggression and temperature show an inverted-U
  relationship (Cohn Rotton, 1997)
• But not all violence is related to temperature
  (e.g., rape)
• Distinction between affective (emotional) and
  instrumental (means to an end) aggression
• Temperature only affects affective aggression
  (Anderson et al., 1997)

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Situational Factors
Source Cohn Rotton, 1997
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Situational factors

• Disadvantaged groups Relative deprivation
  (Runciman, 1966)
• Cultural variation Cultural norms and values
  cultural norms of violence and aggression vary
• Subculture of violence High level of violence is
  accepted as the norm (Baumeister Heatherton,
  1996) defining conditions under which violence
  is disinihibited
• Interactionism Violence and aggression are never
  a simple act from one specific cause, it is
  multifactorial

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What is Motivation?

• Think about motivated behaviour
• Eating and drinking
• Displaying aggression
• Sexual behaviour
• What common features do these motivated
  behaviours have?

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What is Motivation?

• Motivation covers all types and categories of
  human behaviour
• Questions regarding the origins, drives and
  predictors of motivation and behaviour are
  addressed by many areas of psychology e.g.
  biological psychology, social psychology,
  personality etc.
• Motivation is the driving force behind
  volitional behaviour and determines the
• Strength
• Direction
• Persistence
• of behaviour (Geen, 1995)

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Biological Needs

• Biological needs serve the evolutionary purpose
  of survival and are powerful influences on
  motivation
• Organisms have regulatory mechanisms to guide
  behaviour
• Features of a regulatory mechanism
• System variable (what is regulated)
• Set point
• Detection mechanism
• Correctional/regulatory mechanism
• Aims to maintain HOMEOSTASIS drive reduction
  hypothesis
• However, drive-reduction is problematic and seems
  to have flaws what about investigative
  behaviour?
• Optimal arousal theories preferable level of
  stimulation necessary to satisfy needs (Yerkes
  Dodson, 1928)

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Psychological Needs

• Not all motivated behaviours are directed by
  HOMEOSTASIS
• Sexual behaviour is motivating, but not related
  to homeostasis
• Exploratory behaviour intrinsic motivation
  when left in new environment is not driven to
  achieve homeostasis
• Rogers (1960), Maslow (1962), and Deci and Ryan
  (1985) suggest that humans have psychological
  needs for self-actualization or autonomy
  explains motivated behaviour such as exploratory
  behaviour and seeking tasks

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Reinforcement, Reward, and Motivated Behaviour

• Reinforcement can determine motivated behaviour
• Intermittent reinforcement help maintenance of
  behaviour
• Conditioned reinforcement motivation is
  determined by stimuli that are reinforcers e.g.
  extrinsic money, status or intrinsic
  satisfaction, confidence, enjoyment
• Deci and Ryan (1985) persistence is only likely
  if the reward system is intrinsic

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Learned Helplessness

• If persistent behaviour results in no change in
  the environment then negative emotion and reduced
  motivation result
• Overmeier and Seligman (1967) experiments with
  animals
• Expectation of success is lowered as the result
  of continued failure (inability to avoid electric
  shocks), so persistence decreases learned
  helplessness
• When the situation is structured so that
  behaviour and outcomes are independent,
  non-intentionality and maladaptive behaviour are
  the likely result (Seligman, 1975)
• Moderated by personality some people still try
  hard, regardless of repeated failure
• Lead to research on incompetence and
  self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977)

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Cognitive Evaluation Theory Classic Research on
Intrinsic Motivation

• Deci (1971, 1972) College students offered money
  for solving problems, while another group of
  students just solved the problems without any
  external reward? unpaid students spent more time
  solving the problems in free time
• Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett (1973) effect of
  extrinsic rewards on children's intrinsic
  interest and motivation

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Cognitive Evaluation Theory Classic Research on
Intrinsic Motivation

• Method
• One group of children asked to draw pictures and
  rewards promised for the best drawing (reward
  condition)
• Another group drew pictures, without the promise
  of a reward (non - rewarded condition)
• Another group drew pictures and given a
  surprise reward (unexpected reward condition)

time spent drawing
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Rewards Intrinsic Motivation

• Results suggest that intrinsic motivation is
  undermined by extrinsic, tangible rewards like
  money (undermining effect Deci and Ryan,
  1980)
• When a behaviour is controlled by events such as
  rewards, the behaviour only tends to persist so
  long as the controlling events are present (Deci
  Ryan, 1987, p. 1026)
• Undermining effect is similar (but not identical)
  to the overjustification effect
• Overjustification effect rewards make it clear
  to the actor that the cause of their behaviour is
  external to themselves people do the behaviour
  for the reward rather than the behaviour itself

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Research on the Undermining Effect

• Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999) conducted a
  research synthesis to examine the effect of
  rewards in reducing intrinsic motivation
• Meta-analysis of 128 studies on effects of
  rewards on intrinsic motivation
• Average effect size (d) of undermining effect
  for different types of rewards
• Engagement-contingent rewards d -.40
• Completion-contingent rewards d -.36
• Performance-contingent rewards d -.28
• Undermining effect very strong across studies

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Mechanisms in CognitiveEvaluation Theory

• How the recipient perceives rewards is critical
  in determining whether their intrinsic motivation
  will be enhanced or diminished
• Rewards that are perceived to control a persons
  behaviour (i.e., perceived as emanating outside a
  person) or suggest that the person is not
  competent decrease (undermine) intrinsic
  motivation
• This is because they cause a shift in the
  persons perception of the causality from within
  the self (internal) to outside the self (external)

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Mechanisms in CognitiveEvaluation Theory

• The reward is said to result in an external locus
  of causality for the behaviour undermining
  intrinsic motivation
• Rewards that are perceived as emphasising the
  informational aspect (i.e., perceived as coming
  from inside the individual) or provide positive
  feedback that supports competence increase
  intrinsic motivation
• In this case the perceived locus of causality is
  within the individual