Aggression

Type of psychology: Biological bases of behavior; emotion; personality;
psychopathology
Fields of study: Aggression; biology of stress; childhood and adolescent
disorders; coping; critical issues in stress; personality disorders; stress
and illness
Aggression is an emotional response to frustration that often leads to angry and destructive
actions directed against individuals, animals, or such organizations as corporate
bureaucracies, social and religious groups, or governments.
Key concepts
• anger
• defensive aggression
• frustration
• hostility
• offensive aggression
• predatory aggression
• regression
• social immaturity
• socialization
• stress
• tantrum
Aggression, as the term is applied to humans, occurs as an emotional reaction
to dissatisfactions and stress resulting in behaviors that society considers
antagonistic and destructive. The term as used in common parlance has
broad meanings and applications. In psychological parlance, however, aggression
generally refers to an unreasonable hostility directed against situations
with which people must cope or think they must cope. On a simple and
relatively harmless level, people may demonstrate momentary aggressive behavior
if they experience common frustrations such as missing a bus, perhaps
reacting momentarily by stamping a foot on the ground or swearing.
The moment passes, and no one is hurt by this sort of aggression, which
most people demonstrate with fair frequency as they deal with frustration in
their daily lives.
People with tattered self-images may direct their aggression toward themselves,
possibly in the form of expressing or thinking disparaging things
about themselves or, in extreme cases, harming themselves physically, even
to the point of suicide. Such internalized forms of aggression may remain
pent up for years in people who bear their frustrations silently. Such frustrations
may eventually erupt into dangerous behavior directed at others, leading
to assaults, verbal or physical abuse, and, in the most extreme cases, to
massacres. Such was the case when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, as an act of
civil protest, killing 167 people, none of whom he knew.
Infants and young children make their needs known and have them met
by crying or screaming, which usually brings them attention from whoever is
caring for them. Older children, basing their actions on these early behaviors,
may attempt to have their needs met by having tantrums, or uncontrolled
fits of rage, in an effort to achieve their ends. In some instances,
adults who are frustrated, through regression to the behaviors of infancy or
early childhood, have tantrums that, while disconcerting, frequently fail to
succeed in anything more than emphasizing their social immaturity. Socialization
demands that people learn how to control their overt expressions of
rage and hostility.