Regular articleWhat can animal aggression research tell us about human aggression?
Section snippets
A multifaceted approach to anger
Analysis of human aggression also involves some attention to the allied concept of “anger.” Russell and Fehr (1994, p. 202) have suggested that “…the concept of anger is. …a script in which prototypical antecedents, feelings, expressions, behaviors, physiological changes, and consequences are laid out in a causal and temporal sequence…” This approach is very similar to what we are advocating for aggression, in that it includes consideration of a number of aspects of anger (stimulus, organismic,
Stimuli that elicit anger and aggression
Perhaps the most systematic empirical evidence on the stimuli that elicit anger and aggression in people comes from Averill (1982). This well-known study represents a particularly well-rounded consideration of instigations, factors, or motives leading to anger, and often to aggression as well (p. 193), in a community sample of presumably normal people. First, the 160 focal anger-instigating incidents that Averill investigated overwhelmingly involved actions of another individual or group that
Rights challenge as a motive for anger and aggression: stimulation by “provocation”
Averill's aggression motives can be compared with the conditions devised for the specific purpose of eliciting aggression; the “provocations” used in an array of laboratory studies of human aggression. Typically, these studies involve games or exercises in which the subject receives some type of provocation, such as high levels of shock received, monies subtracted in a game, or insulting remarks, all ostensibly reflecting the actions of another individual. The subject is then provided an
Anger/aggression-eliciting stimuli: relationships between humans and nonhumans
Averill's material on anger instigations from a community sample, and the various provocations used in laboratory research in human aggression, provide some common themes that potentially link with animal research. Analyses of offensive aggression suggest that it is the behavioral component of a dedicated biobehavioral system that has evolved because it is adaptive in the context of responding to resource challenge (Blanchard and Blanchard, 1984). For most mammalian species, agonistic or
Organismic factors
As with other mammals (Suomi, 2002), the marked individual differences in human aggression may reflect physiological factors, experiential history, or the interaction of the two. Hyperaggressive individuals are a particular focus of interest, and it is notable that motivations toward aggression based on the need to control or impress others appear to be characteristic of many or most highly aggressive criminals or psychopaths (reviewed in Bond et al., 1997). For example, Toch (1980) described
Response variables
This is a particular focus of difficulty in relating animal and human aggression and one where Beach's admonition not to rely on formal characteristics of behavior may be particularly important. First, there is the enormous range of human behavioral phenomena to which the term aggression has been applied; ranging to upward of 250 definitions in one treatment (Harre and Lamb, 1983). The difficulty is not only that most of these have no equivalents in nonhuman behavior, but also that it is hard
Effects or outcomes of aggression
Laboratory animal research on aggression suggests that offensive aggression is the behavioral component of a dedicated biobehavioral system that has evolved because it is adaptive in the context of responding to resource challenge (e.g., Blanchard et al., 1999). For most mammalian species, aggressive behavior appears to determine access to resources through an intermediate step, the construction of relationships of individuals that establishes their relative priority of access in advance,
Offensive aggression: a summary
These—briefly sketched—considerations suggest a potentially close correspondence between the emotions and motives involved in offensive aggression in nonhuman animals and what is sometimes called angry aggression in people. Offensive aggression is not the only behavioral phenomenon that has been labeled aggression in our species (see Blanchard et al., 1999, for some others), but, other views notwithstanding (Albert et al., 1993) it appears to be the one that best corresponds to a wide range of
… and a note about defensive aggression
The material discussed in this special issue has concentrated primarily on offensive aggression, a phenomenon well described in animals that, we suggest, corresponds to angry aggression in individual people. The dichotomy between offensive and defensive aggression implies the existence of a second aggression motive, again potentially characteristic of people. Toch (1980) has suggested that some (rather uncommon) highly violent individuals are “self-defenders,” who display intense fear of others
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and by NSF IBN97-28543.
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