12.1 Defining Aggression

Although people commonly use the word aggressive to describe everything from acts of physical violence, to vigorous scrubbing of a dirty pan, to a tenacious salesperson, social psychologists reserve the term aggression for any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another person or persons (or any living thing). An aggressive act may be intended to cause physical harm (a punch) or psychological harm (e.g., posting hurtful comments on someone’s Facebook wall) or both. We generally apply the term violence only to acts of aggression with more severe or lasting consequences.

Aggression

Any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another person or persons (or any living thing).

The Role of Intention

The definition above emphasizes the intention of the person committing the act. If a person intends to harm another person but isn’t successful (e.g., throws a punch but misses), we would consider that an aggressive act. Likewise, aggression can manifest in a deliberate failure to act (e.g., not telling someone that he is about to embarrass himself because you want to see him humiliated). When a lifeguard applies painful pressure to someone’s chest in order to help her breathe, we wouldn’t call this aggression because the intention is to save a life. But intentions are not always so easily parsed. What if a woman bites her male romantic partner on the neck during a moment of intimacy? She is intending to cause pain, but whether or not it is an act of aggression depends on whether or not her intention is to harm him.

The Harm Caused by Aggression

Aggression warrants our attention because of the harm it does to those who are victimized. This harm can take many forms. When acts of aggression are physical, the most salient type of harm is immediate or lasting feelings of pain, suffering, injury, or death. Nonlethal types of physical violence, such as rape and assault, can be psychologically traumatic for the victim, leading to overgeneralized anxiety, hypervigilance, sleeplessness, nightmares, rumination, irritability, self-blame, emotional detachment (dissociation), difficulty concentrating, and humiliation. An act of violence can shatter a person’s formerly security-providing view of the world as a relatively safe place (e.g., Coker et al., 2002; Janoff-Bulman & Yopyk, 2004; Winkel & Denkers, 1995). In extreme cases, posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, may occur, a syndrome that can extend these reactions to trauma over many years (Keane et al., 1990). In short, many acts of violence change the victim’s life forever.

As the story of Chanelle Rae’s suicide reveals, verbal insults, social rejection, and cyberbullying can also have grave consequences. These acts generate feelings of frustration, humiliation, anxiety, anger, social isolation, helplessness, and despair. In children, they can result in reduced self-esteem, poorer grades, and depression (e.g., Donnerstein, 2011). These negative feelings also can lead to aggressive acts of retaliation, resulting in a vicious cycle of violence. One such incident was the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. The killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, felt rejected and bullied, and responded by killing 12 students and a teacher before turning their weapons on themselves (Chua-Eoan, 2007, March 1). Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University in 2009, was also the target of verbal aggression in high school and regarded the Columbine killers as heroes standing up for the oppressed. According to a student in his English class, “As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘Go back to China’” (High school classmates say gunman was bullied, 2007). People stripped of a sense of significance and value in the world, whether due to being victims of aggression or other life circumstances, sometimes perceive lashing out violently as their only recourse to enact revenge and to have a lasting impact on the world (Solomon et al., in press).

Roses lie on a balcony overlooking a vigil held in Oslo on July 25, 2011, attended by some 150,000 people holding flowers in a show of solidarity with the 77 murdered victims of the attacks in Norway.

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Acts of aggression that lead to serious harm or death also have wide-ranging effects on those who care about the victim. The grief from loss brings great suffering (e.g., Parkes & Weiss, 1983). In the case of the 2011 Norway massacre, over 10,000 people gathered outside Oslo Cathedral for a memorial service for the victims. Acts of mass murder often lead to societal changes such as stronger security measures, stricter gun laws, and sterner sentencing policies.

Finally, we should note that the collateral damage from aggression also extends to those who simply witness it (Davis & Carlson, 1987). They often experience symptoms of trauma. Those who survive attacks such as the Norway shootings also often experience survivor guilt, the haunting sense that there is something unjust in their own survival when those equally innocent did not survive (Erikson, 1968). The broad reach of aggression in harming people’s lives should make us all invested in understanding its causes.

Affective and Instrumental Aggression

Social psychologists distinguish between two types of aggression (Geen, 2001). With affective aggression, the main goal is to harm the other person simply for the sake of doing so. Such behavior is motivated by a strong affective, or emotional, state. Affective aggression often is impulsive, as when a fight breaks out at a bar, but it can be delayed and calculated, as in the case of a premeditated plan to seek revenge by throwing a rock through someone’s window. Instrumental aggression occurs when someone intends to inflict harm on another person to serve some other goal. A bully hits a classmate to get attention from a girl. A hit man kills for a fee. Instrumental aggression is not triggered by strong emotions, but such behavior is still intended to harm. Aggressive acts often blur the line between these two types. A robber may shoot a cashier partly to get money but also partly out of anger over things happening in his own life. A husband may punch his wife in anger but also to maintain control over her.

Affective aggression

Harm-seeking done to another person that is elicited in response to some negative emotion.

Instrumental aggression

Harmseeking done to another person that serves some other goal.

Although instrumental aggression certainly is important, most of the theory and research we will discuss deals with the “hot,” affective type of aggression because it appears to characterize a majority of the aggressive acts committed. For example, in 2010, among those murders in the United States in which the offender could be determined, people were more likely to be killed by someone they knew than by a stranger (78% of the time). Half the murders were committed by a romantic partner, family member, or friend. For female victims, 38% of the time the killer was a current or former male romantic partner (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010).

Measuring Aggression

There are many statistics on different types of aggression that occur out in the world. Researchers can use these data to examine correlational relationships with potentially influential factors (e.g., watching violent TV) and how they unfold over time. But to manipulate potential causes to determine if they influence aggression, researchers have had to invent ways to measure the behavior without assaults and shootings breaking out in their labs. Fortunately, laboratory paradigms have been developed that lead participants to believe they are causing physical harm to someone else without actually doing so (Geen, 2001). For example, participants have been given opportunities to administer electric shocks to supposed other participants (e.g., Buss, 1961) or dole out a dose of painfully spicy hot sauce (e.g., Lieberman et al., 1999). Although not typical, these are forms of aggression; in fact, hot sauce has been used in numerous cases of child abuse (Koppel, 2011, August 24; Lieberman et al., 1999).

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SECTION review: Defining Aggression

Defining Aggression

Aggression is any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another person(s) or any living thing.

This definition emphasizes the intention to harm.

Harm from aggression affects not only the victim, but also loved ones, witnesses, and sometimes the broader community.

Aggression can be in either of two forms.

Affective: emotionally driven actions where the intent is to harm.

Instrumental: actions that do harm but the intent is to achieve another goal.