Causes Of Aggressiveness

What are the causes of aggressiveness? Are they strictly biological or do emotional and social factors also intervene? What do the leading authors in Social Psychology say about aggressiveness and aggression? It is a reality: we have all acted aggressively (to a greater or lesser extent) at some point in our lives. Although not all of us have done it for the same reasons; in fact, the causes can be as different as the people we are from each other.

According to the RAE, aggressiveness is the tendency to act or respond violently. Aggression, for its part, would be the consequence of aggressive behavior; that is, the violent act on something or someone. But why do we act aggressively? Is there a clear trigger? We are going to try to shed some light on these questions.

As we mentioned, the causes of aggressiveness are diverse. We are going to see the most frequent ones.

Low tolerance to frustration

Frustration is an unpleasant feeling, the result of experiencing failure, disappointment, or the imposition of limits, for example. We get frustrated when we had put all our efforts (be it physical, mental…) and illusions in something that doesn’t end up going well.

Also when we do not achieve success in some objective that we had set for ourselves. Thus,  another cause of aggressiveness is frustration (or a low tolerance for it). Not everyone is capable of tolerating the feeling of frustration; This occurs especially in children and adolescents, who are often still learning to manage this feeling or show difficulties in doing so.

Yale Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

Continuing with frustration as one of the causes of aggressiveness, in 1939, the Yale Group, consisting of Dollard et al., Began experimental research on aggression within the field of social psychology. Let’s notice that we no longer speak only of aggressiveness, but of aggression.

These authors established the frustration-aggression hypothesis; According to this energy-based hypothesis, a person is motivated to act aggressively not by innate factors, but by an impulse induced by frustration. 

The authors understood frustration as that necessary condition that arises when the achievement of goals is blocked; for its part, aggression is the action whose purpose is to harm another organism. According to Dollard et al., Frustration always leads to one form or another of aggression, and aggression is always the consequence of frustration.

The wrath

Other authors of social psychology also speak of another possible cause that explains aggressiveness (or aggression): it is anger.

In this sense, Berkowitz (1964, 69, 74) adds an intermediate concept between the concepts of frustration and aggression, which consists of all those environmental conditions or signals appropriate for aggression. According to him, frustration does not immediately provoke aggression, but rather generates a state of emotional activation in the person : anger.

Such anger produces an internal disposition for aggressive behavior; However, this behavior will only take place if in the situation there are stimulating signals that have an aggressive meaning, that is, cues associated with conditions in which anger is released, or simply anger itself.

Stimuli will acquire this quality of aggressive cues through classical conditioning processes, and according to Berkwoitz, any object or person can become an aggressive cue  in this way.

A learned behavior

Bandura (1973) is another of the authors who talks about the possible causes of aggressiveness; According to him, the first step in acquiring a new form of aggressive behavior is the modeling process . Thus, people acquire new and increasingly complex forms of behavior (and in this case, aggressive), observing them in other people (or models) along with their consequences.

In this sense, and always according to Bandura, if we see someone act aggressively and be reinforced by it, we tend to reproduce the same action in similar situations.

In other words:  aggressive habits are acquired through the direct reinforcement of aggressive responses. Thus, positive reinforcement (in the form of approval or material rewards) would increase the frequency and maintenance of aggressive responses (especially in children). In addition, aggressive behaviors could even transfer to new situations if they are rewarded.

An innate behavior

Another interesting model of social psychology, and that tries to shed light on the causes of aggressiveness, is the Emotional calculation model of Blanchard et al. (1977) (especially applicable to animals, yes). According to this model, there are innate mechanisms at the base of aggression, and it would explain offensive / defensive aggression through a cost-benefit analysis.

Thus, the model suggests that anger is associated with offensive attack and fear of defensive attack. The offensive attack (preceded by anger) is usually caused by the territorial invasion of a fellow man, and the defensive attack (associated with fear) is generally a response to a previous attack by another individual. The two emotions can occur at the same time, since both are important for survival.

An instinct

Freud was the author who first developed the conception of aggression as a servant of the “pleasure principle”; According to him, the aggression was a reaction to the frustration experienced in the pursuit of pleasure or the satisfaction of libido. According to other authors, such as Lorenz (1963), aggression is an innate behavioral disposition that arises from natural selection and, like other dispositions, increases the chances of survival and effective conservation of the species.

Both Freud and Lorenz believed that human aggression was inevitable. Thus, for them there was only the solution of self-regulation. To achieve this, they proposed to discharge small amounts of energy in a continuous and controlled way through socially acceptable forms of aggression (for example, through participating in competitive sports).

Other possible causes of aggression

We have mentioned some of the most important theories of aggression and aggression in social psychology; However, the causes of aggressiveness remain multiple, and on many occasions other factors (of various kinds) not mentioned intervene, such as: drug use (and excess), having a neurodevelopmental disorder, manifesting difficulties in self-regulation emotional, internal conflicts, interpersonal conflicts, etc.

On the other hand, an altered physical state can also lead us to act aggressively.

Understanding aggressive behavior

Aggressive behavior, like any other type of behavior (both in animals and humans) can be analyzed and understood. To do this, we can turn to the famous explanatory theories of this phenomenon, but above all, and more importantly, study and understand the context of the person, the triggers that may have led them to act like this, and their personal and dispositional characteristics.

We are not all equally aggressive, of course. However, let us remember that there are elements that can increase the probability that we act in a violent way, such as: drugs (alcohol, cocaine, heroin …), an irritable, rabid or even sad mood, other types of substances ( stimulants), as well as various mental disorders.

From psychotherapy, knowing the causes of aggressiveness in each specific case will help us to understand the person and help him if he needs it.