Aggression

Many psychologists have done research in the field of anger and aggression as it is one of the most common emotions experienced by humans. If prolonged, it can lead to devastating effects such as depression, headaches and various other disorders. A lot of work is being done to help people over come anger and to learn to forgive others. Anger is a feeling which results due to unfulfilled expectations, injustice, frustration, injury or it might be biologically determined. Aggression is the action you take in response to your anger i.e. attacking an individual or a group. There are five inter related dimensions (i.e. cognition, emotion, communication, affect and behavior) which operate simultaneously in any angry situation. Cognition refers to our present thoughts, emotion is the physiological arousal that anger produces, communication is the way in which we show our anger to people, Affect is the way we experience life when we are angry, and lastly, behavior is the way we act when we are angry. All these dimensions collectively shape our thoughts and actions when we are angry or frustrated (http://www.psc.uc.edu/sh/SH_Anger.htm). The real cause behind angry and aggressive behavior is still unclear. Some theorists such as Freud and Konrad Lorenz said that people behaved aggressively because it is 'human nature' to be hostile and aggressive towards people who we dislike or who are different from us. They said that heredity, hormones, or brain dysfunction were the possible causes of aggression and totally ruled out other possibilities such as external influences. Other theorists (for example Brine and Kelley) said that frustration lead to anger. The social learning theorists (such as Bandura) believed that aggression was not innate nor did frustration lead to anger. According to him, people learned to become aggressive by observing aggressive models and receiving payoffs following aggression. The fault with all these theories is that they have attributed aggression to only one cause, ignoring the other side of the issue. It would be wrong to say that aggression is directly a consequence of heredity as child rearing and observational learning does play a major role in shaping a person's behavior. Thus, we have to consider both sides of the argument and accept that all these influences are important factors in causing aggression. (http://www.mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap7/)

Every person behaves differently when frustrated or angered by someone. Anger and aggression take many forms, some being quite subtle. Sometimes when a person is angry, he/she notices a direct change in behavior. Your behavior can become aggressive (name calling, fault finding, slashes of temper), assaultive (slapping, shoving, hitting), hurtful (gossip, stealing), rebellious (anti-social, refusal to talk). These changes in behavior are obvious and can be noticed by the person who is undergoing the change as well as third parties. However, you can also act in less obvious ways such as being irritable, jealous, resentful, judgmental or sulky. Anger can sometimes result in indirect behavior and the person suffering may not know the real cause of the behavior. Such behaviors include withdrawal, depression, mental illness, poor health, alcoholism, over eating, anxiety, or crying. Verbal remarks which may be direct or indirect also reflect what mood a person is in and through these verbal, physical and psychological cues, one can easily recognize his anger.

Apart from recognizing anger, it is also essential to understand anger. What gives rise to anger and aggression? Why are some children more violent than others? Is it because they are genetically different? Or is it due to the differences in their environment and upbringing? Socio-biologists say that the frequency with which countries fight against one another show that we are born with an aggressive nature. We have an urge to destroy anything that stands in our way. These people argue that in order to survive, humans need to be aggressive, to protect their own land and conquer others territory.

Research has shown that by stimulating certain parts of an animal's brain, you can make him aggressive and by stimulating other parts, you can make him gentler and less aggressive. In 1996, a man named Charles Whitman killed his wife and mother and later killed 14 other people. An autopsy showed that there was a large tumor in the limbic system of his brain (same area that caused aggression in animals).

This proves that aggression may sometimes have a physical basis. It can also have genetic, chemical or hormonal basis. A survey has revealed that adopted children living with aggressive parents have less chances of being aggressive compared to those children who have the genes of an aggressive parent. (http://www.mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap7)

Physiological factors also play an important role in determining aggression in people. High testosterone (male sex hormone) is associated with unfaithfulness, more sexual urges, more divorce and anti social behavior. A viral infection known as rabies is known to cause violent behavior. Around 90% of the women complain that they become irritable before menstruation and 50% of the crimes by women in jail occurred during or before their menstrual cycle. Furthermore, about three times in a thousand, a male inherits and extra X or Y chromosome. So instead of XY they are either XXY or XYY. At one time it was believed that those men who had an extra chromosome committed more violent acts and were sent to jail more frequently. (http://www.mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap7) So inheritance clearly plays a pivotal role in shaping our behavior.

Another theory states that frustration results in anger. For instance if you have a meeting with your boss and you get stuck in heavy traffic, you honk but the cars refuse to move, what will happen? Immediately you will feel that you are losing

your temper. When we hope for more than we get, or when we are intentionally hurt, insulted, cheated or made fun of we feel frustrated and this leads to anger and aggression. The frustration-aggression hypothesis states just this: anger naturally results from frustration. Berkowitz states that apart from frustration, all sorts of unpleasant stimuli (such as bad odor, cigarette smoke, fear, pain, discomfort and so on) combined together cause aggressive behavior.

One explanation of aggression/anger is provided by the social learning theory. This theory denies that frustration automatically leads to aggression or that humans are innately aggressive. Instead it asserts that we learn to be aggressive by observing others who act violently or aggressively. Bandura argues that aggression can be learned either by observing aggressive people or by receiving and/or expecting rewards