Pro and anti social behaviour

• Substitute responses help deflect aggression
• Aggressive behaviour is frequently forced into culturally defined patterns. Some of these are prohibited, some are permitted and some are actually rewarded by social approval.  

Dollard et al (1939) – Frustration/Aggression hypothesis -> Freud.

• Insight into how aggression towards out-group develops.
• Determined by psychodynamics of the in-group and displacement of their feelings towards the leader of the out-group.
• Inter-group conflict arises out of irrational feelings and emotional needs of in-group members.
• Not based on conflict of material interest (e.g. scarce resources).

Evaluation.

• Doob and Sears (1939) reported that when participants were asked to imagine frustrating and non-frustrating situations, they generally felt angry in the frustrating situations.
• This hypothesis was attacked as if failed to account for justified and unjustified frustration. When Doob and Sears experiment was re-done with justified frustration the anger decreased significantly.
• Berkowitz aggression effect - When participants were electrocuting each other, the presence of a weapon, a symbol, associated with aggression and violence, the levels of electrocution increased.
• Berkowitz ‘Behaviourist’ position argues that aggression is a more general example of the relationship between unpleasant stimuli and negative effect. Negative effect is simply unpleasant emotions and feelings, such as anxiety, anger, annoyance or pain. This negative effect can trigger either ‘fight or flight’ as well as a set of associated thoughts and reactions related to such experiences.