Social Psychology (Pp 384-397)

Elliot Aronson

University of California, Santa Cruz

Timothy D. Wilson

University of Virginia

Robin M. Akert

Wellesley College 6th edition

Social Situations and Aggression

Aggression can also be caused by unpleasant social situations.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Social Situations and Aggression

Frustration and Aggression Frustration-Aggression Theory The idea that frustration—the perception that you are being prevented from attaining a goal—increases the probability of an aggressive response. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Social Situations and Aggression

Frustration and Aggression Barker, Dembo, & Lewin (1941): • Children who played with toys immediately played joyfully.

• Children frustrated by waiting were extremely destructive: Many smashed the toys, threw them against the wall, stepped on them, and so forth. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Social Situations and Aggression

Frustration and Aggression Several things can increase frustration and, accordingly, will increase the probability that some form of aggression will occur: – Delay – Goal proximity – Unexpectedness of the frustration Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Social Situations and Aggression

Frustration and Aggression What circumstances can turn frustration to aggression?

– The size and strength of the person responsible for your frustration.

– That person’s ability to retaliate.

– Proximity of the person.

If the frustration is understandable, legitimate, and unintentional, the tendency to aggress will be reduced.

Being Provoked and Reciprocating

Aggression frequently stems from the need to reciprocate after being provoked by aggressive behavior from another person.

But even when provoked, people do not always reciprocate. When convinced the provocation was unintentional, most of us will not reciprocate. If there are mitigating circumstances, counter-aggression will not occur. But to curtail an aggressive response, these mitigating circumstances must be known at the time of the provocation.

Aggressive Objects as Cues

Aggressive Stimulus An object that is associated with aggressive responses and whose mere presence can increase the probability of aggression. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Aggressive Objects as Cues

In a classic experiment by Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony Le Page (1967), college students were made angry. Some of them were made angry in a room in which a gun was left lying around (ostensibly from a previous experiment), and others were made angry in a room in which a neutral object (a badminton racket) was substituted for the gun. Participants were then given the opportunity to administer what they believed were electric shocks to a fellow college student. Those individuals who had been made angry in the presence of the gun administered more intense electric shocks than those made angry in the presence of the racket.

Imitation and Aggression

Children frequently learn to solve conflicts aggressively by imitating adults and their peers, especially when they see that the aggression is rewarded. Source of images: www.clipart.com

Imitation and Aggression

The people children imitate the most, of course, are their parents.

And if the parents were abused as children, this can set a chain of abuse in motion. Indeed, a large percentage of physically abusive parents were themselves abused by their own parents when they were kids.

Imitation and Aggression

Social Learning Theory The idea that we learn social behavior (e.g., aggression) by observing others and imitating them.

In a classic series of experiments, Albert Bandura and his associates demonstrated the power of social learning.

Imitation and Aggression

• Bandura’s basic procedure was to have an adult knock around a plastic, air-filled “Bobo” doll (the kind that bounces back after it’s been knocked down). • The kids were then allowed to play with the doll. • In these experiments, the children imitated the aggressive models and treated the doll in an abusive way. • Children in a control condition, who did not see the aggressive adult in action, almost never unleashed any aggression against the hapless doll.

Violence in the Media: TV, Movies, and Video Games

Effects on Children

1. BY THE TIME THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CHILD FINISHES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, HE OR SHE WOULD HAVE SEEN 8,000 MURDERS AND MORE THAN 100,000 OTHER ACTS OF VIOLENCE.

2. 58% OF ALL TV PROGRAMS CONTAIN VIOLENCE—AND OF THOSE, 78% CONTAIN NOT A SHRED OF REMORSE, CRITICISM, OR PENALTY FOR THAT VIOLENCE. 3. OME 40% OF THE VIOLENT INCIDENTS SEEN ON TV DURING A PARTICULAR YEAR WERE INITIATED BY CHARACTERS PORTRAYED AS HEROES OR OTHER ATTRACTIVE ROLE MODELS FOR CHILDREN.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Effects on Children

The more TV violence individuals watch as children, the more violence they exhibit later as teens and young adults.

Watching a violent film has the effect of increasing the number of aggressive acts committed during a game—primarily by the youngsters who already rated as highly aggressive by their teachers.

Even children who are not inclined toward aggression will become more aggressive if exposed to a steady diet of violent films over a long period. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Effects on Children

Priming

by TV has a tendency to increase the probability of an aggressive response when children subsequently are frustrated or hurt, exposing children to an endless stream of violence in films and on TV might have a similar tendency to prime an aggressive response. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Effects on Children

Playing violent video games seems to have the same kind of impact on children that watching TV violence does.

Violent video game playing positively correlates with aggressive behavior and delinquency in children.

The relationship was found to be stronger for children who had been more prone to violence beforehand.

The relationship is more than correlational. Exposing a random sample of children to a graphically violent video game had a direct and immediate impact on their aggressive thoughts and behavior.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

What About Adults?

• The amount of time spent watching television during adolescence and early adulthood correlates positively with likelihood of subsequent violent acts against others.

• This association was significant parental education, family income, and neighborhood violence.

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What About Adults?

• Daily homicide rates in the United States have almost always increased during the week following a heavyweight boxing match.

• Moreover, the more publicity surrounding the fight, the greater the subsequent increase in homicides. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

What About Adults?

• Daily homicide rates in the United States have almost always increased during the week following a heavyweight boxing match. • Moreover, the more publicity surrounding the fight, the greater the subsequent increase in homicides. men but not of white men . Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

The Numbing Effect of TV Violence

Repeated exposure to difficult or unpleasant events tends to have a numbing effect on our sensitivity to those events, as indicated by reductions in: • Emotional response, • Physiological response, and • Perception of brutality.

How Does Media Violence Affect Our View of the World?

• Adolescents and adults who watch more than 4 hours per day are more likely to have an exaggerated view of the degree of violence taking place outside their own home. • Heavy TV viewers have a much greater fear of being personally assaulted. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Why Does Media Violence Affect Viewers’ Aggression?

1. “If they can do it, so can I.” 2. “Oh, so that’s how you do it!” 3. “Those feelings I am having must be real anger rather than simply a stressful day.” 4. “Ho-hum, another brutal beating; what’s on the other channel?” 5. “I had better get him before he gets me!”

Does Violence Sell?

• People who saw a nonviolent, non-sexual show were able to recall brands advertised during commercials better than the people who saw a violent show or a sexually explicit show.

• This was true both immediately after viewing and twenty-four hours after viewing and was true for both men and women of all ages. • Violence and sex seem to impair viewers’ memory.

Violent Pornography and Violence against Women

Scripts Ways of behaving socially that we learn implicitly from our culture. 1. Sexual scripts adolescents are exposed to suggest to them the traditional female role is to resist the male’s sexual advances and male’s role is to be persistent. 2. Although 95% of the males and 97% of the female high schoolers surveyed agreed that a man should stop sexual advances as soon as a woman says no, nearly 1/2 of those same students also believed that when a woman says no, she doesn’t always mean it.

Violent Pornography and Violence against Women

• During the 1990s, this confusion prompted several colleges to suggest that dating couples negotiate an explicit contract about their sexual conduct and limitations at the very beginning of the date.

• But social critics lambasted these measures on the grounds that they encouraged fear and paranoia, destroyed the spontaneity of romance, and reduced the excitement of dating to something resembling a field trip to a lawyer’s office. They were eventually dropped. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Violent Pornography and Violence against Women

• Coincidental with an increase in date rape has been an increase in the availability of magazines, films, and videocassettes depicting vivid, explicit sexual behavior.

• Careful scientific research suggests an important distinction between simple pornography and violent pornography.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Violent Pornography and Violence against Women

• Exposure to violent pornography promotes greater acceptance of sexual violence toward women and is almost certainly a factor associated with actual aggressive behavior toward women.

• After watching violent pornography, men express more negative attitudes toward women and have more aggressive sexual fantasies.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

The End