Contents
Aggression can be a cold and calculated action, done on purpose and directed not to harm the victim, but to some other target, but it can also be an emotional reaction, driven primarily by the desire to harm. In either case, the attackers may pay a lot of attention to how to achieve their aggressive goals, but very often they act impulsively and involuntarily. In such cases, aggressive behavior is determined mainly by their internal arousal and is sometimes completely automatically controlled by the characteristics of the victims available at the moment.
The following example illustrates what I mean.
A diabetic woman with her husband and four-year-old child rented a room in her friend’s apartment. The hostess constantly complained about the behavior of the little girl, who spoiled and broke everything.
One evening, when her mother was preparing dinner and not feeling well, her daughter went to the bathroom alone to wash herself. As her mother later said, “after washing herself, the girl squeezed out toothpaste, mixed it with shampoo and smeared the entire sink with this mixture, and at the same time smeared the toilet seat with lipstick and tore off the curtain. The hostess came running with loud cries: “Look what your daughter has done. She screwed everything up.» And I was already quite tired and angry. I told her all day, «Julia, don’t do this, Julia, don’t do that.» All day long I tell her the same thing, I’m already tired of repeating it. I grabbed her, dragged her, I will never forget that. I was so mad at her that I was ready to kill her” (Kadushin & Martin, 1981, p. 154).
Sad story; an exhausted woman, sick and obviously crushed by want, takes out her evil on her disobedient child and beats him in a fit of rage. There are hundreds and thousands of similar examples. These are not some rare cases, but a constant occurrence in our daily life. Undoubtedly, most of us have had moments when we lost our temper and unleashed outbursts of anger at an angry person: a child, a loved one, an acquaintance, or maybe even an outsider — physically, or verbally, or in one form or another. The mother seemed to have excuse enough: she was sick and tired, and the daughter was behaving badly. And yet the reaction was disproportionate and the child was punished too severely. Haven’t each of you overreacted in one situation or another (even if we did not cause serious damage to the person who caused our anger)? We happen to see people go into a rage under the influence of very minor stimuli, perhaps because they were already in an irritable state due to external stress or headache, fatigue, excessive heat, etc. Sometimes the result is an attack, too strong compared to the attacker’s conscious intent. The mother in the example above obviously did not want to cause her child serious harm; she was probably overwhelmed by too much emotional excitement.
What is emotional aggression?
It is important that the reader be clear about my understanding of emotional aggression. Let me briefly formulate my position: basically, I consider this type of aggression as aggression caused by intense internal physiological and motor reactions of the individual. Internal arousal stimulates aggression (or an aggressive tendency) that causes attempts to harm the victim. In such cases, a state of intense arousal, I can say more dramatically, «rabies» pushes a person to a physical or verbal attack.
Impulsive (or expressive) emotional aggression
Let’s not forget, however, that this behavior constitutes aggression. emotional (or hostile) and is motivated more by the desire to harm the victim than by the desire to achieve any other goals. Moreover, I believe that in many cases (but not always) aggressive actions are carried out without any serious thinking and planning, although hostile thoughts and ideas may well accompany an aggressive impulse.
This means, first of all, that the attack is not a completely deliberate and deliberate act. Julia’s mother did not intend to beat her child. An emotionally aroused man, attacking his victim, usually does not think about the further consequences, just as the woman in our example did not calculate the possible long-term results of her behavior. Most of the murders committed by their nature belong to this type of aggression. As one sociologist noted, such killings are not “consciously controlled acts such as calculated political assassinations or cold-blooded acts of revenge. They are carried out quickly, in the heat of passion and without regard for consequences … Attacks are carried out rapidly, in a state of rapidly growing rage ”(Katz, 1988, p. 18). The extreme impulsiveness of emotional action is described here.
Such impulsive (or involuntary, or expressive) behavior is most often observed when a person is in a state of high arousal. The mother who had beaten her child was in a state of rage; likewise, most murderers are enraged when they kill their prey. Even relatively unemotional and calculated aggressive behavior can have an impulsive expressive component.
Other possible aggressive targets
Emotionally aroused, possessed by a strong desire to harm their victim, the aggressors may have a number of other goals, such as changing the status quo, restoring a threatened self-concept, achieving a sense of power and control, raising their own social status, etc. Their actions may even be motivated by a desire to assert their own moral values—to preserve what they believe to be right. Aggressive children often claim that they hit other children to make them behave properly. Many of them think that their victims deliberately violated certain regulations, just as Julia clearly disobeyed her mother, and (according to them) they beat the younger ones to assert their authority and maintain discipline.
They may also want to harm
Whatever the other goals of highly aroused people, it must be remembered that they also want to harm their victims. They may find satisfaction in asserting their power or control over the victim, or in maintaining their values, but behind all this — and at the same time most of all — they seek to harm the one being attacked.
There is ample evidence to support this position. Chapter 1 showed that people who have been frustrated can take pleasure in knowing that they are hurting their abusers. When they received such information shortly after they began to attack, it motivated them to inflict even more suffering on their former tormentors. Later in this book, the reader will see that angry (angry) people calm down and may even stop attacking their offenders altogether if they think they have already caused them enough damage.
Of course, people are not always ready to admit that they have sought or seek to harm their victims. They prefer to mask their aggressiveness with moral motives. Nevertheless, every person from time to time can be aware of his desire to harm the other side. A few years ago my staff and I interviewed prisoners in English and Scottish prisons who had been convicted of violent crimes. Among other things, we asked these people about what motivated them to attack their victims. Many of the perpetrators (over 40% in each group) reported that they deliberately sought to harm their victims (interestingly, self-protection was the next most frequently cited urge in both groups).
While it is important to understand the difference between emotional and instrumental aggression, many aggressive acts are a mixture of the two, rather than one or the other alone. The behavior of Julia’s exhausted mother was due not only to her emotional arousal, but also to the desire to assert her power over her naughty daughter. Similarly, an aggressive boy may pick a fight with a classmate partly because he was furious at what he thought was an insult, but also partly because he hoped to achieve high status among his peers by showing himself to be a «tough guy». Here I would like to be completely clear in understanding my position: just as it would be erroneous to assume that any emotional aggression is the only consequence of blind rage, we would also ignore an important aspect of this behavior if we believed that it was dictated only by the desire for achieving certain external goals, such as power or status.
While aggressive actions serve a variety of purposes and depend on many factors, in Chapters 2 and 3 I will focus mainly on behavior that is primarily aimed at harming other people. In doing so, I will focus on a discussion of the factors affecting impulsive (or expressive) aggression, which is carried out without any previous calculation, deliberation, planning, that is, unintentionally, and from which no significant gain (benefit) is expected, except for the pleasure of causing damage. another person Much of this discussion will be devoted to the conditions for the manifestation of emotional aggression. Chapter 2 will elaborate on the classic idea that emotional aggression is primarily triggered by frustration. Chapter 3 presents a modification of this concept, in the light of which it is argued that negative affect produces aggressive tendencies (but not necessarily real attacks). In the same chapter, it will be demonstrated that the impulsive aspect of emotional aggression can be influenced by certain situational stimuli. In other words, the focus will be on relatively unintentional aggression. In a certain sense, this is our main line: it is necessary to find out what people are capable of when they are emotionally aroused and do not think about the reasons for their arousal, nor about how they should react.
All of the above does not mean, of course, that thinking has little effect on emotional behavior. Excited people are obviously influenced by what they perceive to be the cause of their arousal, and even how they interpret it. Therefore, Chapter 4 will discuss the influence of thoughts, interpretations, and goals (intentions) on the reactions of people who have been subjected to frustrating influences. I will also attempt to relate my analysis to current psychological theories of emotion and provide a brief overview of the latest theoretical approaches in this area before expounding my own conception of the development and operation of the anger response.
And the last necessary clarification. My focus on research on emotional aggression does not, of course, imply that instrumental aggression is less significant or less common. It is clear that people often engage in aggressive actions in order to obtain certain benefits, and in my book I will discuss this type of behavior frequently. Nevertheless, psychologists and mental health professionals, in my opinion, have not yet paid sufficient attention to emotional aggression. I will try to correct this imbalance.
Chapter 2
The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis. Definition and main provisions. Application of the concept of «frustration-aggression». Do all types of frustration generate aggression? Even unintentional frustration can lead to aggression. Some conditions that increase the likelihood of aggressive reactions to frustration. Revision of the concept of «frustration-aggression». Influence of attribution on the intensity of discontent. Are frustrations and insults comparable? See →