Instrumental aggression is aggressive behavior which is maintained because it is positively reinforced (Glassman, 303). This idea is the same theory of positive reinforcement, the only difference being specifically under these circumstances is that this response is labeled as ‘aggressive’. A very simple example of this is fraud. Fraud is when an individual or a company takes someone else’s money which does not belong to them, the instant outcome of this is that the individual or company is reinforced and happy because they got the money that they wanted, however later they may or may not get caught by the law. The only real way to avoid such aggression as this would be make it so that this ‘aggressive’ behavior does not give the desired outcome and that only way to go about accomplishing this would be to alter the environmental conditions.
Frustration-aggression hypothesis states that frustration, defined as blocking a goal-oriented response, was the sole cause of aggression (Glassman, 304). This aspect came about in response to Freud’s theory of aggression which stated that aggression was innate. It basically means that if stimulus and circumstances around an organism create frustration, then it is most likely that this feeling of frustration will spark feelings of aggression and bring out aggressive behavior. Of course the degree and severity of the aggressiveness depends on the degree and severity of the frustration; the more frustrated an organism is the more likely they will be more aggressive and vice versa. Another factor which affects the severity of the aggressive behavior is the severity of the prior punishment of the aggressive behavior, the more severe the punishment the less severe the aggressiveness will be the next time. Of course aggressive behavior does not only come out as a result of an organism’s frustration, it can also be produced solely by reinforcement. This is where the theory becomes quite sketchy; subject A might respond to the same frustrating situation that subject B might respond to in a very different way. For example, the subject A might let out the aggressive behavior caused as a result of the frustration directly to the source of the frustration when subject B might displace the aggressive behavior elsewhere. When displacement is added to this theory, instances where there is no immediate source of frustration arise, and these instances account for instances of aggression that instrumental aggression cannot account for.
Even when trying to define ever instance when aggressive behavior is shown with instrumental aggression and frustration-aggression hypothesis according to the behaviorist approach, there are still many instances that aggressive behavior is shown that remain unaccounted for. For this reason, both these aspects have many limitations and weaknesses, which other approaches might be able to account for. However, since the behaviorist approach only study observable behavior and believe that all behavior is learned, both these aspects focus on how a subject learns aggressive behavior.
