Frustration and Aggression

1939

John Dollard (1900–1980)

A theme that runs through the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud is that humans are highly motivated to seek gratification of biological urges, such as sex, thirst, and hunger. In this process, they are bound to be frustrated by the nature of socialization because social forces present obstacles to the satisfaction of these urges. Humans, Freud suggested, react to this frustration with aggression, as other animals do. To the degree that this is true, it has important implications for the governance of human societies.

In 1939, a group of social scientists led by John Dollard published Frustration and Aggression, which drew on psychology and Psychoanalysis. The authors concluded that aggression can always be traced to some form of frustration and that frustration leads to a number of responses, including aggression. At the time, the social relevance of this work was fairly clear: anti-Semitism in Germany, the Spanish Civil War, the Great Depression, and racism in the American South (and elsewhere) were each real-life examples of the links between frustration and aggression. A later modification of the Dollard frustration-aggression hypothesis proposed that frustration leads to anger. It is anger that may lead to aggression if there are cues (such as a weapon) present when a person is most angry.

Around the same time, Tamara Dembo, a student of Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, studied the dynamics of anger to explore Freud’s theory that frustration leads to aggression. As part of her research, Dembo prevented the participants’ completion of the apparently easy tasks. The situation always began as fun but grew tense when the experimenter frustrated the participant while continuing to insist that each task had a solution. As frustration increased, almost all the subjects displayed intense anger. Dembo interpreted the results in terms of the lifespace—that is, in terms of Lewin’s formula (behavior is a function of the person in his or her environment).

SEE ALSO Psychoanalysis (1899), Gestalt Psychology (1912), Rattus norvegicus var. albinus (1929), Psychological Lifespace (1935), [B = f(P,E)] = The Lifespace (1936)

Policemen in riot control gear attempt to stem civil unrest in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the wake of protests against Swiss politician Christoph Blocher. According to a group of social psychologists led by John Dollard, the aggression displayed by rioters can always be traced to some form of frustration, and according to Sigmund Freud, frustration invariably results from obstacles presented by social forces to the gratification of basic needs and wants.