Negative emotions, including fear, anger, pain, and frustration, particularly when accompanied by high arousal, may create aggression. Contrary to the idea of catharsis, social psychological research has found that engaging in aggression does not reduce further aggression.
Psychological Causes
These include bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia, the dementia group, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and acute stress disorder.
Psychologically aggressive acts include behaviors such as ridiculing, verbal threats, isolating one s partner from family and friends, and attempting to control one s partner, and are intended to degrade one s partner and attack his or her self-worth by making him or her feel guilty, upset, or inadequate.
The limbic system is rich in neurons containing serotonin and norepinephrine. Observations suggest that high levels of serotonin are associated with reduced aggressiveness and that high levels of norepinephrine are associated with increased aggressiveness.
Three main groups of aggression theories are examined: Psychoanalytic, drive and learning theory.
In general we can identify five approaches to understanding our aggression: ethological, psychotherapeutic, social learning, frustration-aggression, and cultural.
Types of aggression:
Social/relational and cyberbullying, Instrumental/cognitive and physical, Verbal and emotional/impulsive, Instrumental/cognitive and social/relational.
What is reactive aggression? Reactive aggression, also known as impulsive aggression, happens in response to a specific trigger. This form of aggression isn't planned and is often associated with feelings of intense anger.
PHASE 1: TRIGGER.
The student has a negative experience or event to which they respond with anger. This initiates the aggression cycle.
They found that neuroticism positively correlated with aggression, whereas agreeableness negatively linked with aggression.
Here, I'll discuss three types of trigger: external, internal, and synthetic. These each have different strengths and weaknesses, and each can be used to design great behaviors that form lasting habits. Let's look more closely at each type of trigger.
An aggressive personality trait or trait aggressiveness has been defined as “a general propensity to engage in acts of physical and verbal aggression, a proneness to anger, and a proneness to hold hostile beliefs about other people across situations” (Buss & Perry, 1992; Baron & Richardson, 1994; Berkowitz, 1993; ...
Serotonin and Aggression
Research indicates that, in general, the neurotransmitter serotonin has an inhibitory action in the brain (Daw et al., 2002; Yan, 2002) and that it is deeply involved in the regulation of emotion and behavior, including the inhibition of aggression (Davidson et al., 2000; Volavka, 1999).
Three strategies have been offered for reducing aggression that leads to violence such as child and spouse abuse and juvenile vandalism: control, catharsis, and cohabitation. The control strategy is most popular among political conservatives who see punishment as the best way to deter crime and protect society.
Aggression can be direct behaviors such as hitting, kicking, biting, and pushing to name a few. Additionally, aggression can take on an indirect form like teasing, bullying, spreading rumors, name-calling, or ignoring someone.
They are physical aggression, verbal aggression, emotional aggression and hostile aggression.
Emotional or impulsive aggression refers to aggression that occurs with only a small amount of forethought or intent and that is determined primarily by impulsive emotions.
Freud held that aggression stems mainly from a powerful death wish or instinct (thanatos) possessed by all persons. He also suggested that directly opposed to this death wish is another instinct, eros, which is focused on pleasure, love, and procreation.
Social cognitive theory posits that psychological factors, such as anger and other types of emotions can potentially influence social cognition of adolescents involved in aggression. It further suggests that adolescents learn by observing others and observing delinquent acts of peers can reinforce aggressive behaviors.