Why Do People Attack? 4 Determinants Of Aggression

Violence is a type of social interaction based on a specific way of relating: aggression. Despite the negative nuances generated around violence, the truth is that it is deeply rooted in our society, and it is and has been a key gear for the development of our civilization. Is that why people attack?

Aggression and violence are found to a greater or lesser extent in practically all human beings. This can be seen in the huge public that endorses and enjoys films with bloody themes, and there is a very extensive catalog.

Furthermore, all peoples, including civilized ones, need police and an army. This could be due to the impulse of many human beings – although in the end it does not take place – to solve problems through violent solutions.

Types of aggression: affective and instrumental

Some define aggression as behavior that hurts another living being. Other authors such as Berkowitz add intentionality to this definition, considering aggression as a conduct whose intention is to harm.

Seeking to attack another person can be constituted as an end in itself —that is, the objective is for the person to suffer— or to achieve something through that aggression —it is usually the most common. Based on this, there are two types of aggression:

• Affective aggression : through this type of violence, people attack based on affection. The main goal is to harm the other person. It is usually a type of aggression based on impulse and not premeditated.
• Instrumental aggression: in this case, people attack for other purposes after that aggression. These gains can be very varied: getting that they do not harm us – self defense -, material benefits – that a person gives us all their money – or symbolic – being considered strong in our social circle.

Why are there attacks?

Being an aggression the result of frustration, an instinct or an inevitable discharge of energy (Miller, 1939), the truth is that there are certain situations where people are more likely to attack, and where, in fact, people attack more .

These situations have to do not with the people we confront or what they have done to us: it has to do with the keys to the environment. Therefore, factors such as temperature or overcrowding will cause more aggressive behavior in people who are in that context. These 4 determinants are explained below.

Next situations: transfer of emotion

Zillmann proposes through his theory of the transference of arousal, that the emotional activation prior to the moment that causes the aggression is a determinant for that person to choose to attack or not.

According to Zillmann, a person not only attacks due to the nonspecific activation and cognitive processes that are generated in the emotional situation that is being lived, but it can also be a consequence of a past situation. His theory is that part of the activation of the previous emotion is transferred to the new situation.

This seems intuitive; However, when a person leaves a situation that has activated them emotionally, that activation decreases until, apparently, disappears.

Although the person has stopped feeling that activation, the truth is that they are more likely to attack than a person who has not been activated before; that is, as an echo it can return to the same state more quickly. This means that if there is something that angers us, the emotional activation that arises from that anger will be added to the previous activation, intensifying the response we give.

It is important to say that the previous emotional activation does not necessarily have to be negative. If moments before a very intense happiness has been felt, in the same way that activation will be transferred to the subsequent anger reaction, being exacerbated. In investigations of aggression, in fact, people were activated through physical exercise. The results were the same.

Temperature: heat and aggression

With expressions such as “having a heated discussion” it is observed how the relationship between aggression and temperature is something deeply rooted socially. Anderson defended that heat is a source of aversive sensations that increase the probability of an aggressive response.

On the one hand, Anderson argues that this can also be applied to low temperatures. In the negative affect-flight model of Baron and Bell (1976), it is proposed that it is the discomfort that heat generates, that is, negative affect, and not so much the activation that high temperatures give, which would explain why in many cases people attack. What this theory postulates is that if the negative affect felt is moderate, the person will attack. If the negative affect is excessively high, it will produce a flight behavior, reducing the probability of aggression.

Finally, the neo-associationist cognitive model argues that negative thoughts and aggression prevail in unpleasant temperatures. This occurs regardless of the presence or absence of causes to which the aggression is attributed.

Noise: symptom of stress and aggression

Another of the determinants why people attack is noise. High noise levels have been linked to physical and psychological conditions, stress, and performance problems ; also with other very interesting processes such as the decrease in helping behavior, and what concerns us, the increase in aggressive behaviors.

Authors such as Geen and McCown (1984) carried out various experiments. They showed that people subjected to high noise levels attacked more than those who had previously found themselves in contexts of silence.

Baron and Richardson (1977) included an interesting variable: control. Although it is true that noise also increased aggressive behaviors, when the person believed that they could control the aversive noise, their aggressive behavior was less than that of those who were devoted to it without being able to do anything.

Overcrowding: control measures

The relationship between overcrowding and aggression is not fully established. Ruback and Patnaik (1989) studied aggression in crowded contexts. They concluded that aggressive behaviors were not entirely motivated by the aversiveness of being crowded, but by the lack of control that the individual perceived in the situation. Crowded individuals tried to gain control through vandalism.

Although crowding is related to psychological processes such as performance or mental health, the relationship with aggression is not entirely clear. In fact, authors such as Bagley (1970) argued that it is not the fact of being crowded that encourages aggressive behavior, but other elements of that reality.

Apparently, there are several aspects that can influence people to attack or stop doing so. The fact that these four elements are in the situation does not determine that the aggression will take place, it only favors it. Therefore, aggression is not justified when one is at forty degrees, even if it is a risk factor for it to develop.

Other factors, such as the behavior of the people with whom we interact, cultural determinants -such as the culture of honor-, levels of emotional management or the processes of socialization of violence in the place where we live are also elements that can favor the violence.