Psychological and Social-Cultural Factors in Aggression
Biological factors influence how easily aggression is triggered. But what psychological and social-cultural factors pull the trigger?
Aversive Events
Suffering sometimes builds character. In laboratory experiments, however, those made miserable have often made others miserable (Berkowitz, 1983, 1989). Aversive stimuli—hot temperatures, physical pain, personal insults, foul odors, cigarette smoke, crowding—can evoke hostility. A prime example of this phenomenon is the frustration-aggression principle: Frustration creates anger, which can spark aggression. Even hunger can feed anger—making people “hangry” (Bushman et al., 2014).
The frustration-aggression link was illustrated in an analysis of 27,667 hit-by-pitch Major League Baseball incidents between 1960 and 2004 (Timmerman, 2007). Pitchers were most likely to hit batters when they had been frustrated by one of three events: the previous batter had hit a home run, the current batter had hit a home run the last time at bat, or the pitcher’s teammate had been hit by a pitch in the previous half-inning. A separate study found a similar link between rising temperatures and the number of hit batters (Reifman et al., 1991; see Figure 78.1). When overheated, we think, feel, and act more aggressively.
Figure 78.1 Temperature and retaliation
Researchers looked for occurrences of batters hit by pitchers during 4,566,468 pitcher-batter matchups across 57,293 Major League Baseball games since 1952 (Larrick et al., 2011). The probability of a hit batter increased if one or more of the pitcher’s teammates had been hit, and also with temperature.
In the wider world, violent crime and spousal abuse rates have been higher during hotter years, seasons, months, and days (Anderson et al., 1997). Studies from archaeology, economics, geography, political science, and psychology converge in finding that throughout human history, higher temperatures have predicted increased individual violence, wars, and revolutions (Hsiang et al., 2013). Craig Anderson and his colleagues (2000, 2011) have projected that, other things being equal, global warming of 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 2 degrees Celsius) could induce tens of thousands of additional assaults and murders—and that’s before the added violence inducements from climate change–related drought, poverty, food insecurity, and migration.
Reinforcement, Modeling, and Self-Control
Aggression may naturally follow aversive events, but learning can alter natural reactions. As Unit VI explained, we learn when our behavior is reinforced, and we learn by watching others.
In situations where experience has taught us that aggression pays, we are likely to act aggressively again. Children whose aggression has successfully intimidated other children may become bullies. Animals that have successfully fought to get food or mates become increasingly ferocious. To foster a kinder, gentler world we had best model and reward sensitivity and cooperation from an early age, perhaps by training parents to discipline without modeling violence.
Parent-training programs often advise parents to avoid modeling violence by screaming and hitting. Instead, parents should reinforce desirable behaviors and frame statements positively. (“When you finish loading the dishwasher you can go play,” rather than “If you don’t load the dishwasher, there’ll be no playing.”)
Different cultures model, reinforce, and evoke different tendencies toward violence. For example, crime rates have also been higher and average happiness lower in times and places marked by a great disparity between rich and poor (Messias et al., 2011; Oishi et al., 2011; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). In the United States, cultures and families in which fathers are minimally involved have had high violence rates (Triandis, 1994). Even after controlling for parental education, race, income, and teen motherhood, American male youths from father-absent homes are incarcerated at twice the rate of their peers (Harper & McLanahan, 2004).
Violence can vary by culture within a country. Researchers analyzed violence among White Americans in southern towns settled by Scots-Irish herders whose tradition emphasized “manly honor,” the use of arms to protect one’s flock, and a history of coercive slavery (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). Compared with their White counterparts in New England towns settled by the more traditionally peaceful Puritan, Quaker, and Dutch farmer-artisans, the cultural descendants of those herders had triple the homicide rates and were more supportive of physically punishing children, of warfare initiatives, and of uncontrolled gun ownership. “Culture-of-honor” states also had higher rates of students bringing weapons to school and of school shootings (Brown et al., 2009).
Media Models for Violence
Parents are hardly the only aggression models. In the United States and elsewhere, TV, films, video games, and the Internet offer supersized portions of violence. An adolescent boy faced with a real-life challenge may “act like a man”—at least like an action-film man—by intimidating or eliminating the threat. As we learned in Module 30, violent video game playing tends to make us less sensitive to cruelty (Arriaga et al., 2015). It also primes us to respond aggressively when provoked. And media violence teaches us social scripts—culturally provided mental files for how to act in certain situations. As more than 100 studies confirm, we sometimes imitate what we’ve viewed. Watching risk-glorifying behaviors (dangerous driving, extreme sports, unprotected sex) increases real-life risk-taking (Fischer et al., 2011).
Music lyrics also write social scripts. German university men who listened to woman-hating lyrics administered the most hot chili sauce to a woman. They also recalled more negative feelings and beliefs about women. Listening to man-hating lyrics had a similar effect on women (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006).
How does repeatedly watching pornographic films affect viewers? As pornography has become more easily available, rates of reported sexual violence have decreased in the United States (though not in Canada, Australia, and Europe). Nevertheless, just as repeated viewing of onscreen violence helps immunize us to aggression, repeated viewing of pornography—even nonviolent pornography—makes sexual aggression seem less serious (Harris, 1994). In one experiment, undergraduates viewed six brief films each week for six weeks (Zillmann & Bryant, 1984). Some viewed sexually explicit films; others viewed films with no sexual content. Three weeks later, both groups, after reading a report about a man convicted of raping a female hitchhiker, suggested an appropriate prison term. Compared with sentences recommended by the control group, the sex film viewers recommended terms that were half as long. In other studies that explored pornography’s effects on aggression toward relationship partners, pornography consumption predicted both self-reported aggression and participants’ willingness to administer laboratory noise blasts to their partner (Lambert et al., 2011; Peter & Valkenburg, 2016).
Pornography with violent sexual content can increase men’s readiness to behave aggressively toward women. A statement by 21 social scientists noted, “Pornography that portrays sexual aggression as pleasurable for the victim increases the acceptance of the use of coercion in sexual relations” (Surgeon General, 1986). Contrary to much popular opinion, viewing such scenes does not provide an outlet for bottled-up impulses. Rather, “in laboratory studies measuring short-term effects, exposure to violent pornography increases punitive behavior toward women.”
Do Violent Video Games Teach Social Scripts for Violence?
Experiments worldwide indicate that playing positive games produces positive effects (Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014; Prot et al., 2014). For example, playing Lemmings, where a goal is to help others, increases real-life helping. So, might a parallel effect occur after playing games that enact violence? Violent video games became an issue for public debate after teenagers in more than a dozen places seemed to mimic the carnage in the shooter games they had so often played (Anderson, C. A., 2004, 2013).
In 2002, three young men in Michigan spent part of a night drinking beer and playing Grand Theft Auto III. Using simulated cars, they ran down pedestrians, then beat them with fists, leaving a bloody body behind (Kolker, 2002). These same young men then went out for a real drive. Spotting a 38-year-old man on a bicycle, they ran him down with their car, got out, stomped and punched him, and returned home to play the game some more. (The victim, a father of three, died six days later.)
Coincidence or cause? In 2011, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik bombed government buildings in Oslo, and then went to a youth camp where he shot and killed 69 people, mostly teens. As a player of first-person shooter games, Breivik stirred debate when he commented that “I see MW2 [Modern Warfare 2] more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else.” Did his violent game playing—and that of the 2012 mass murderer of Newtown, Connecticut’s first-grade children—contribute to the violence, or was it a merely coincidental association? To explore such questions, psychologists experiment.
This is but one anecdote, and, as we say in psychological science, “the plural of anecdote is not evidence.” Yet such incidents of violent mimicry make us wonder: What are the effects of actively role-playing aggression? Does it cause young people to become less sensitive to violence and more open to violent acts? Nearly 400 studies of 130,000 people offer some answers (Anderson et al., 2010; Calvert et al., 2017): Video games can prime aggressive thoughts, decrease empathy, and increase aggression. University men who spend the most hours playing violent video games have also tended to be the most physically aggressive (Anderson & Dill, 2000). (For example, they more often acknowledged having hit or attacked someone else.) And people randomly assigned to play a game involving bloody murders with groaning victims (rather than to play nonviolent Myst) became more hostile. On a follow-up task, they were more likely to blast intense noise at a fellow student. Studies of young adolescents reveal that those who play a lot of violent video games become more aggressive and see the world as more hostile (Bushman, 2016; Exelmans et al., 2015; Gentile, 2009). Compared with nongaming kids, they get into more arguments and fights and earn poorer grades.
Ah, but is this merely because naturally hostile kids are drawn to such games? Apparently not. Comparisons of gamers and nongamers who scored low on hostility measures revealed a difference in the number of fights they reported. Almost 4 in 10 violent-game players had been in fights, compared with only 4 in 100 of the nongaming kids (Anderson, C. A., 2004). Some researchers believe that, due partly to the more active participation and rewarded violence of game play, violent video games have even greater effects on aggressive behavior and cognition than do violent TV shows and movies (Anderson & Warburton, 2012).
“ Research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression.”
American Psychological Association Task Force on Violent Media, 2015
Other researchers are unimpressed by such findings (Ferguson, 2013, 2014, 2015). They note that from 1996 to 2006, video game sales increased yet youth violence declined. They argue that other factors—depression, family violence, peer influence—better predict aggression. The focused fun of game playing can also satisfy basic needs for a sense of competence, control, and social connection (Granic et al., 2014).
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To sum up, research reveals biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences on aggressive behavior. Complex behaviors, including violence, have many causes, making any single explanation an oversimplification. Asking what causes violence is therefore like asking what causes cancer. Those who study the effects of asbestos exposure on cancer rates may remind us that asbestos is indeed a cancer cause, but it is only one among many. Like so much else, aggression is a biopsychosocial phenomenon (Figure 78.2).
Figure 78.2 Biopsychosocial understanding of aggression
Because many factors contribute to aggressive behavior, there are many ways to change such behavior, including learning anger management and communication skills, and avoiding violent media and video games.
A happy concluding note: Historical trends suggest that the world is becoming less violent over time (Pinker, 2011). That people vary across time and place reminds us that environments differ. Yesterday’s plundering Vikings have become today’s peace-promoting Scandinavians. Like all behavior, aggression arises from the interaction of persons and situations.