"Describe and evaluate two socialPsychological theories of aggression."

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Psychology                                                                   Kiren Lakhani

                     “Describe and evaluate two social

                   Psychological theories of aggression. “

        Aggression is an action which involves hurting others on purpose and Aronson et Al (1997) says, “Aggression must mean to harm somebody. The harm can be physical-intending to cause bodily harm or psychological-intending to cause physical pain.”

Psychologists have identified different forms of aggression, these being person-oriented aggression, which is designed to hurt some-one else and so causing harm is the main goal. In contrast to that there is instrumental aggression which as its main goal is obtaining some sort of a desired reward. There’s also proactive aggression which is instructed by the entity to achieve some of their most desired outcome and there’s reactive aggression which is an entity’s reaction to someone else’s aggression.

There are many theories in psychology which consider the cause of aggression. Two social-psychological theories that have considered this are the frustration-aggression hypothesis and the social learning theory.

Frustration-aggression behaviour is mainly prompted by frustrating situations. This is supported by Dollard et al (1939) which asserted that when frustration occurs; the outcome is always aggressive, therefore suggesting some very close links between the two. This frustration can also be an unpleasant sensation caused by unfilled desire. E.g. maybe not satisfying out goals or unfulfilling our desire! According to the frustration-aggression hypothesis, if an individual, for example, is thwarted on the way to the goal, the resulting frustration will increase the probability of an aggressive response.

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Support for this idea come from a study by Barker et al (1941). Here young children became frustrated when was shown a room full of attractive toys which were kept out of reach. After a lengthy period of time, the children were finally allowed to play with the toys and it was here that they behaved extremely destructive, tending to smash, throw and stand on the toys rather than play happily now that they finally have the toys. This was the case when compared to a non-frustrated group and therefore being an important distinction between frustration and deprivation.

The study ...

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