Not entirely supporting the views of learning, Bandura’s study shows learning still could be a contributing factor. This is because there are still many other ways of learning to be aggressive, for example learning from society, your family, and more often than not, the media. One attempt at showing how behaviours could be learnt from the media is from Manstead et al ’95 in which he outlines these five variables;
- If the observed behaviour is thought to be real it is more likely to be imitated.
- If viewers identify with the aggressor then they are more likely to imitate.
- If the aggressive behaviour is based on revenge it is more likely to be copied than aggressive behaviour based on achieving goals.
- If the behaviour is seen to be just then it is more likely to be imitated.
- Aggressive behaviour which is followed by punishment is less likely to be pursued.
With these five variables comes the proposition that “acts of violence” have to follow two other criteria to be considered as acts of violence;
- People, human groups or living things (including animals with human characteristics) are physically harmed, restrained, barely escape death, injury, pain etc…
- Also that the harm is caused by or explained in terms of the behaviour of other people
So if the media is to blame why isn’t all of society acting aggressive, and not just out housemates? The main answer is that most of the media (not including news bulletins which have around 1%) have between 37 and 80% non aggressive incidents within a typical programme, documentary or article.
This then means that the Big Brother contestants that are behaving aggressively see the same percentage of aggression within the media as the non-aggressive contestants. Which leads to the next question, why are they all not behaving quite similar?
Well I believe there has to be an underlying factor that changes the level of aggression shown by different people, as we are all exposed to the same amount of violence in the media. I believe that comes in the form of relative deprivation. This proposes that the cause of a conflict is the unacceptable discrepancy between what people think they have a right to expect, and what people (given current social conditions) are actually able to obtain. In the case of the Big Brother aggression the relative deprivation theory offers an explanation which is based on the contrast between groups’ expected and actual access and prosperity to power. This is always seen in every Big Brother series as there are independent groups that form within the first week and then contrast on views with other groups of people within the Big Brother House. This is portrayed well over the television and the whole series and is sometimes used by the producers to increase conflict within the house which in turn then increases ratings. This is done by giving groups of people more access or the notion that they have more access to luxury goods for example alcohol, cigarettes, chocolate etc… this then leads on to absolute deprivation (Gurr ’70) where some groups of people are actually worse off than others within a proximity.
One of the major events that go on within the Big Brother house are the daily tasks. These denote how much money as a group the whole household will get to spend on supplies. With this comes failures and achievements, and depending on how well certain individuals do in these tasks, depends on how much money the house gets to spend. This can and does cause huge conflicting ideas between people and can often separate the house into groups. This is one form of relative deprivation which could lead to many forms of aggression. Leading on from this, experiments were done by Vivian & Brown ’95, and have been able to show that members of groups tend to share the same notions of justice as these reflect the norms of the social group. The shared sense of injustice that follows perceptions of relative deprivation would explain uniformity behaviour in groups. Brown ’96 stated that
‘Imposing subordinate goals is not always effective and may sometimes increase antagonism towards the out-group if the co-operation fails to achieve its aims (for example the daily task is failed). It may also be important for groups engaged in co-operative ventures to have distinctive and corresponding roles to play so that each group’s contributions are clearly defined. When this does not happen, liking for the other group may decrease as group members may be concerned with the in-groups integrity’.
This shows that relative deprivation is a deciding factor in aggression, but other psychologists go on to describe further into deprivation. One such example would be Runciman ’66 who goes much deeper to state that there are two different types of relative deprivation
- Egoistic Relative Deprivation: is experienced if an individual feels deprived relative to other similar individuals. This could be seen as certain people are rewarded in the Big Brother house for unknown reasons just to produce conflict within the house.
- Fraternalistic Relative Deprivation: is experienced when members of one group compare themselves to members of another group. If the conditions in the two groups are such that one group feels that they are worse off than the other, feelings of relative deprivation may arise.
Consequently, the relative deprivation theory claims that it is not people’s actual negative circumstances, (absolute deprivation) that matter it is their relative deprivation as when people feel that they deserve more than they have got this can lead on to aggression and from that can come frustration.
Berkowitz ’72 claimed that frustration due to perceived relative deprivation could incite aggression. In today’s society (like the Big Brother Household) relative deprivation can be felt more prominently in a modern society where there are a lot more daily items that are needed or can be take for granted e.g. alcohol or fast food.
The frustration aggression hypothesis which leads on from the relative deprivation theory states that frustration always leads to aggression and aggression is always caused by frustration. This explanation can be classed as social-psychological and psychoanalytic. Dollard et al ’39 proposed that the pursuit of personal goals involves the arousal of psychic energy. In the case of the Big Brother contestants personal goals would involve daily tasks and placing people up for eviction. When we attain these goals the energy is released, and when we fail or the goal is blocked (for e.g. the person put up for eviction is not evicted) then the energy becomes built-up (frustration). This must be released and so Dollard suggested that it was via aggression. This then parallels with Freud’s explanation of aggression in which a person becomes aggressive from frustration and this anger is projected onto other, less powerful people or objects (scapegoat theory). The projection is a way of protecting a person’s ego from self-aggression.
This projected aggression in a confined area with other people that share that same space leads to arguments and (as a result) aggression within the Big Brother house.