FREE ESSAY ON AGGRESSION AND ITS INTRICACIES

AGGRESSION AND ITS INTRICACIES

Aggression is a critical part of animal existence, which is an inherent driving force to
humans, as we, too, are animals. The source of aggression within humans is a long
summative list, but before trying to understand its source one must apply a working
definition of aggression. Aggressive behavior is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as
any action of an animal that serves to injure an opponent or prey animal or to cause an
opponent to retreat. (7) David G. Myers states that aggression is any physical or verbal
behavior intended to hurt or destroy.(9) There are many types of aggressive behaviors,
which can be differentiated from the factual act to the hidden motives. For example, an
aggressive behavior can be negative or positive, accidental or intended, and physical or
mental. Aggression can take numerous forms, the act of hitting a wall to release
aggression has some of the same roots as playing football and enjoying hitting the
quarterback. A child yelling at his parents could be equated, in its aggressiveness, with
hitting one's horn when one is cut off on 495.
Aggression is also a relative construct. What might seem like a terribly aggressive act
to one person, most often the victim, might seem like an induced response to the
perpetrator.(3) Psychologist Arlene Stillwell performed an experiment where she assigned
ordinary college students at random to play the role of a victim or a perpetrator in a
small incident. Then she asked the students to describe the situation that had just
transpired. What she found was that both victims and perpetrators deformed the truth
equally to present their sides in a better light. Victims would dwell on their lasting
traumas from the incident while the perpetrator might make the act seem like a one-time
action provoked by insurmountable circumstances. The resulting implication is that
aggression is in the eye of the beholder.(3) Due to its relative nature aggression is
extremely hard to isolate and study. Some acts are very easy to categorize as aggressive,
a first degree murder or first degree rape, but is negligent manslaughter aggressive? The
mere act of not shoveling one's sidewalk might have the same effect as a cold-blooded
murder but is it an aggressive act? For the purposes of this paper aggression will be
related to the four conditions presented by Gerda Siann. They are as follows; 1. The
person carrying out that behavior, the aggressor, does so with intention. 2. The behavior
is taking place within an interpersonal situation which is characterized by an
accumulated distress or a opposition. 3. The aggressor intends by the behavior in
question to gain a greater advantage than the person on the other side of the aggression.
4. The aggressor carrying out the behavior has either provoked the situation or moved the
conflict unto a higher degree of strength.(11) Aggression has numerous reasons and
consequences both must be analyzed in order to see from whence it arises. An explicit
example of the strength of both nature and nurture concerning aggression is the life of
Kody Scott, a young gang member of California. He was already a gang member in middle
school, and would not have been had the gang not already been in place when he graduated
from elementary school - thus environment's role in aggressive behavior, but one fateful
day when he stole a car to get to the hospital for the birth of his first child, he
intentionally detoured through the neighborhood of a rival gang and killed a rival gang
member. The detour he deliberately took was a conscious decision and not provoked by the
environment - hence nature's toll on his aggressive act.(3)
Aggression is usually associated with negative aspects of the world.(3) This is not
necessarily true, though. Negativity is but half of the nature of aggression. Aggression
can have very positive results. For example, a non-aggressive hockey player gets thrown
around and will therefore not perform very well in an bellicose sport. On the other hand
an aggressive player will not allow himself to be thrown around like the aforementioned
player and will most likely win the small battles just based on the mentality of the
player.(5) Another example of positive aspects of aggression might be a person's sexual
aggressiveness might allow them to obtain a date to prom without any problem, whereas
anyone much less aggressive person would be passive and wait for the person to approach
them. One good aspects of aggressiveness might be ambitiousness or assertiveness, an
aggressive person is more likely to get what they need done as opposed to the inactive
person. Outgoing, a socially positive trait is nothing more than aggressiveness
personified. A female high school senior might be more successful and be rewarded (by
being voted for Best Personality in the MOCK awards) for being socially aggressive -
outgoing. 
Aggression can also be characterized by mentality. Where one hurts someone out of rage or
whether one thinks of numerous ways of hurting someone, aggression still is present in
both situations. The thoughts of a people, for example the Germans in World War Two can
be just as aggressive as the act as the systematic murder of the Jewish community.(8)
Aggression in this case was an extreme example of a spiraling staircase. The Nazi party
did not begin a process of systematic murder at the beginning of their rule, first they
instituted a hate as scapegoats toward the Jews, they then removed some luxuries that the
Jews had, then they removed citizenship, followed by imprisonment, then to slave labor,
and lastly the Final Solution was implemented. The thoughts of hatred at the beginning of
the platform was just as dangerous and aggressive as the gas chambers of late WWII. These
aggressive feelings allowed the Germans to desensitize each other to a point of
genocide.(11) By solely disliking someone they looked the other way when the book burning
began, then it was just a small step to the first pogrom, then they just accepted the
de-humanization of Jews, and this was followed by an escalating progress which led
eventually to the inhumane murder of close to six million human lives. Along with these
pure feelings of anger and hatred -aggression-the Germans also tried to scapegoat and
thereby provide catharsis for themselves by blaming the downfall of their troubles on the
Jewish community. This displacement somehow released pent up rage that had been present
for numerous years of misery for the Germans.(3, Handler) Thus thoughts also cause
aggression or are manifestations of the pure aggression.
The most obvious example of aggression is killing, for that reason the example for this
paper will be the untimely death of people as caused by others. From very young ages
death permeates into all of our lives. From having a loved grandparents passing away to
the learning how to read the newspaper and reading about terrible deaths daily, if not
more often. One strong argument supports that people have built-in aggression. Much like
the theories of Freud, that people have instinctual aggression, whether sexual or
violent, a multitude of scientists and psychologists believe that biology is crucial in
the development of aggression.(9) For example aggression has been correlated numerous
times in a significant way with testosterone.(1) One psychologist, Jack Hokanson, has
tracked catharsis theories for a number of years. One experiment performed by this man
seemed to point that in order to reduce violence or aggression men would react angrily,
whereas women would react in a friendly manner when presented with aggressive
behaviors.(2) The variable that was tested here were the differences in the genders which
proved to be quite polar, for the men were belligerent and the women were almost
uniformly kind.(12) Differences in physical strength also have provided for differences
in aggression levels 
between the two sexes. Since men are physically built stronger than women they are more
likely to become aggressive than are women who are not, in general, as physically
strong.
Neurotransmitters seem to play a very important part in the aggressive nature of mammals.
As tested in monkeys, who have matching 99 percent of their genes with humans, it has
been found that hyper-aggressive or antisocial monkeys have a deficit of the
neurotransmitter serotonin. As an interesting side note the leaders, who have a different
type of aggression -assertion-have higher levels of this same chemical.(1) In this same
study the monkeys seemed to have very predictable heredity patterns, In which the monkeys
were found to easily exhibit the same behavior as the father. This was also found to be
true in men who have been discharged from the Marines for excessive violence, as well as
in criminals in Finland who committed acts of wanton violence.(8) Seratonin has also
found to be an inhibiting factor concerning aggression. A situation or condition that
reduces seratonin levels is among drugs, hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia is a condition of
lowered blood sugar, certain diets can cause or inhibit the onset of this condition, thus
directly affecting genetically the aggressive behavior of a person.(12) On the topic of
diets an correlation has been found with the corn (a food that decreases the levels of
seratonin in the brain) intake of a country and the homicide rates, an obviously
aggressive marker.(10) Another chemical in the human machine that causes or has been
related to has been the anger hormone -adrenaline and its counterpart noradrenaline. This
is inherent in the flight or fight reflex, in which fighting is usually prepared by a
flush of adrenaline into the system, and anger/aggression are integral parts of it.(12)
Stanley Hall found that anger has numerous different effects on the human body, depending
on the person. Aggression can cause either an increase or a decrease in heart rate
depending on the anger causing stimulus.(12) For example, a psychologist named Albert F.
Ax found that his test subjects were experiencing the slowing of their hearts because
they were concentrating too hard on the event supposed to turn them aggressive, in the
case of his experiment a mugger.(12) Another study done by a man named Eron in 1987,
showed that most children, who when described by their peers as having high levels of
aggression, are three times as likely to have a criminal conviction by the age of 30 than
those children who were rated as having high levels of pro-social behavior.(10) That
study shows the apparent stability, or lack of change, in the behavior of people thereby
fueling the genetic, or nature, side of the nature versus nurture war that is currently
being fought.
Epilepsy has also been affiliated with aggressive behavior or at least with outbursts of
it. A very strong correlation has been made between the focus of epileptic discharges
being in the temporal lobe of the brain and discharges of violent and aggressive
behavior. (1) That condition can be helped by psychosurgery but is not used as common as
possible because the biological age group who most is affected by this circumstance are
juveniles or violent offenders who are not capable of giving unbiased, informed consent
to irreversible procedures. Furthermore, evidence liking antisocial
conduct-aggression-with abnormal electrical activity in the temporal lobes. Using a
electroencephalogram (EEG) to study these waves of electricity in the temporal lobe of
sufferers of a sociopath complex, psychologists have surmised that the aggressive
personality disorders are related to a delay of maturation in these areas of the brain,
this could be cause by a innumerable amount of factors like fetal infection, brain
trauma, or lack of proper nutrients in diet.(1) In 1969 a psychologist by the name of
Williams used an EEG on 333 men convicted of crimes and found that out of the 206 men who
had a history of crimes has a disruption, or dysrhythmias, in the temporal lobes.
Following the genetic track of aggression is the undeniable fact that aggressive behavior
also declines sharply with age.(10) Another physiological factor that might affect the
aggressiveness and even violence level of a person is that of cerebral trauma, especially
diseases. These people who exhibit an impairment of the control systems of the brain also
have been known to occasionally suffer from persistent brain immaturity, brain damage, or
toxic impairment of the brain. There has also been presented the single-gene notion about
psychopath or sociopath behavior. Researchers have found that significant number of
prisoners have an extra sex chromosomes, for example an XXY or XYY.(12) Their being in
jail does not seem to be the root of their problem but rather it seems to stem from their
low level of intelligence, which is inherently a genetically influence aspect, according
to Robert A. Baron.(10)
In post-war studies, studies of the most aggressive of all activities, there have been
similarities found with soldier. For example several senior U.S. Air Force officers have
stated that when the Air Force tried to pre-select fighter pilots after world war two the
only common denominator between their WWII aces was that they had all been involved in
numerous altercations as children. Not as bullies but rather as fighters, the type of
person who would not back down once attacked or hurt. This seemed like a strange
connection between the type of job and a similarity in childhood activities, because
significantly less than a third of school populations engage in fights on a regular
basis. This seems to point at a genetic capacity for violence and aggression. More
informally, Gwynne Dyer has felt, through his experiences as a soldier, his genes at work
as he says;
Aggression is certainly part of our genetic makeup, and necessarily so, but the normal
human being's quota of aggression will not cause him to kill acquaintances, let alone
wage war against strangers from a different country....The overwhelming majority of those
who have killed...have done so as soldiers in war, and we recognize that that has
practically nothing to do with the kind of personal aggression that would endanger us as
their fellow citizens. (8)
Here a regular serving soldier spoke with experience of seeing the numerous soldiers that
[derived] their greatest satisfaction from male companionship, from excitement, and from
the conquering of physical obstacles. Those men were most likely part of the 2 percent of
combat soldiers (as noted by Swank and Marchand's WWII study) are predisposed to be
aggressive psychopaths.(8) Men can be compared to animals concerning this apparent
predisposition to aggression. For example, in most species it is the best hunter, the
best fighter, the most aggressive male who ends up passing on his genetic data unto a
female and thereby an offspring. An offshoot of this aggressive psychopath, is another
genetic predisposition, the presence or apathy of empathy for others. Life magazine
printed in their latest magazine that, the heritability of most personality traits is
about 50 percent.(4) Thus showing the strong predisposition to certain behaviors, namely
aggression. Furthermore, aggression...[is a trait] with high heritability.(4) As a result
of this there has been recent debate in some states, like Minnesota, who have been trying
to obtain a sort of genetic cleansing by not allowing the riff-raff of society to breed.
This ethical question shoots back to days of 19th century anthropologist Francis Galton
who also recommended breeding quotas to weed out the unfit.(4) It also sounds much like
the callings of another well-known historical figure from the 1940's, the leader of the
Third Reich, Adolph Hitler.(Handler)
Nurturing also presents a strong argument for the development of violence and or
aggression. Going back to the situation with Kody Scott, how could he have killed his
rival gang member had he not been there, the environment and the years of spending in a
violent gang helped him make the choice to cold-bloodedly execute the young man.(3) One
of the most heated debates going on today is the conditioning value of movies and the
rest of the media. Do movies really affect us in aggressive ways? The United States Navy
seems to think so, for one of their psychiatrists developed a formula to psychologically
enable certain soldiers to become assassins and this process consists of using violent
movies. They do perform this process in order to desensitize the government paid assassin
to murders, executions, and unfeeling deaths. There appear to be three major types of
conditioning occurring with the media concerning violence. First, there is a classical
conditioning when people sit at home and see detailed, horrible suffering of people and
they are associating this killing and suffering with their enjoyment, with a big
container of pop-corn, with their favorite soft-drink, and with their friends and
company, all things that the person sees as positive. B.F. Skinner's operant conditioning
comes into play through interactive video games where there is a reward for killing or
destroying numerous things with no concern for their well-being. Lastly, social learning
as described by Bandura seems to take in mind the numerous role models who people see
nowadays in the movies.(8) For example, in the movie Pulp Fiction, the hero Butch (Bruce
Willis) ends up killing two people and he is glorified at the end of the movie. He makes
up with the person who was chasing him, makes a large amount of money, survives the two
homosexual rapists, and goes off to a paradise with his girlfriend. There is not much
more of a perfect example of someone who could potentially be seen as a good guy who
actually smokes, cheats, kills, lies, and steals. Children also develop attachments to
the type of behavior exhibited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Robert Deniro from
either Goodfellas or Heat.(9) Both of these turn into obvious role models for children
and adolescents. Media such as cartoons presents the evil villain as someone who always
has a sadistic desire for destruction of ransom impersonal someone. More often than not,
thought, they are not like you. For example, in the movie Die Hard III Bruce Wilis is the
protagonist and Jeremy Irons is the antagonist. Bruce Wilis, being the good guy, is an
all-American type of guy, who speaks almost perfect New York English. On the other hand
the villain, Jeremy Irons has an accent which sounds as if it were from Germanic Europe
(Germany is a very good stereotypical evil because of its activities in the early 20th
century). This promotes aggression between people of differing descents because the media
presents a view that blatantly states foreign people are enemies.(3) Movies also tend to
give the feeling that the victim will be dehumanized, much like how in Vietnam soldiers
referred to the enemy as VC or Charlie, thus removing any individualistic characteristics
from the enemy, it turned to be just one single, foreign foe.(3,8) This social phenomenon
especially holds true since most criminals and aggressors generally have a below-average
intelligence, thus are more mentally malleable.
Leonard Berkowitz found that;
There is a remarkable consistency to these findings. The studies reviewed here agree in
noting that punitive parental disciplinary methods (such as physical punishment and
depriving children of privileges) ten to be associated with a high level of aggression
and other forms of antisocial behavior by the children. Love-oriented disciplinary
methods on the other hand, evidently facilitate the development of conscience and
internalized restraints against socially disapproved behavior.(12)
This is very important in the development of children for most sexual offenders, whether
rapists or child abusers, were often time abused themselves as a child or adolescent.
Punishment inherently increases resentment and hostility, thus creating an environment
where the child does not care for the parents and all of the associations that can be
made with the parent, like their morals, rules, and respects. Isolation also tends to
have a very strong effect on the mentality of aggression. Usually with a lack of
interpersonal relationships people cannot fully appreciate the human existence and most
often do not learn how to handle destructive urges because they do not care about
society, which innately is an interpersonal relationship.(6) The aforementioned monkeys
with the lower seratonin levels also, when normal, became hyper-aggressive social misfits
when reared by a mechanized surrogate mother, who did not give the monkeys affection.
This brings up Freud's theory of repressed memories, in which the person puts traumatic
experiences from their past into their subconscious.(1) Freud believed that these
repressed memories will surface in the form of disorders and problems, mostly exhibited
through either sexual dysfunction or violence.(9) Therefore our early surroundings affect
us for most of our lives, at least according to Sigmund Freud. Environment and exposure
compounds any genetic factors, for instance, the inner parts of Washington D.C. have
considerably higher aggressive crime rates (murder, rape, aggravated assault) than a
Maryland suburb like the Derwood/Olney/Flower Hill area does. Reasons for such rates are
that the city houses more people closer to the poverty line.(3) These people have
constant stresses that people do not need to deal with in the suburbs. Drugs and alcohol
are also a considerably stronger force in the city. Those two intoxicants allow people to
perform acts that they would regularly not have the mind to do. For example, alcohol is
consumed, a person looses their inhibitory brain functions and are more likely to forget
the consequences of an aggravated assault or a murder.(3,9) For that reason it is likely
that there was a rash of psychopathic killers in the Russo-Asiatic area in the past
decades. In cities, because of the higher level drug business there is a greater need for
guns and weapons. Due to the higher level of guns intrinsically there will be more murder
and violence. The environment thus fuels the violent nature of the city-dwellers.
Immediate environment also tends to influence aggression. For example, a person could be
inadvertently aggressive toward another in the following way; One person sits down at the
only open stool in a bar, he orders a bowl of pretzels and a cold beer. The bartender
brings him his beer, and he begins to read his newspaper. Suddenly the person next to him
eats a pretzel, without saying a word. At this the person is shocked, and thinks, how can
this cruel person be eating my pretzels? Out of fear for starting an argument he says
nothing but eats one of the pretzels and both men take turns eating pretzels from the
bowl until they are gone. The other man then puts money for his beer down and walks away.
The first man then thinks, Wow! I am glad that evil person is gone, who would steal a
complete strangers pretzels, Honestly? The bartender then arrives and says, here is your
pretzel bowl enjoy.(3, Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) The victim immediately
turned into the aggressor by taking the other man's pretzels. Thus inadvertently being
extremely aggressive towards another human.
Immediate distance also generally affects the aggressiveness level of a person,
especially when killing is involved. The tendency is as follows; the further away one is
from the intended victim the least resistance there will be towards committing the act of
aggression. The bomber pilots who firebombed the city of Dresden, Hamburg, or Tokyo
caused the deaths of about 400,000 people but not once did they hear the screaming or see
the faces of the untold number of children, women, and elderly that they killed.
(3,8,Handler) On the other hand, a person within knife range of person will have a more
traumatic repercussions of killing someone. Whereas the artillery sergeant will never see
the face of his victims, the infantry man will see the terrible contortions of their
victims' faces and hear their pitiful screams as a bullet rips through the inner lining
of their stomach and all intestinal acid seeps onto the rest of their organs.(8) It is a
much more traumatic experience and will thereby lower the aggressive level and might even
make the aggressor penitent. For example one WWII soldiers, William Manchester, states
how;
There was a door which meant there was another room and the sniper was in that - and I
just broke that down. I was just absolutely gropped by the fear that this man would
expect me and would shoot me. But as it turned out he was in a sniper harness and he
couldn't turn around fast enough. He was entangled in the harness so I shot him with a
.45 and I felt remorse and shame. I just remember whispering foolishly, I'm sorry and
then just throwing up.(8)
This point of view contrasts sharply with the prerogative of J. Douglas Harvey a World
War II bomber pilot who upon visiting rebuilt Berlin said, I could not visualize the
horrible deaths my bombs...had caused here. I had no feeling of guilt.(8)
Another important factor involving the aggression of people are other people. Very few
times does an aggressive act stand alone, there is almost always mutual fault and/or
shared blame. David Luckenbill found, in one of his studies, that the major part of
criminal homicide revolved around some sort of reciprocal provocations in which
collective hostility escalated until one person murdered the other.(3) Murray Straus
found the same circumstance appeared in marital violence. In half of the reported cases
of domestic violence it was found that both spouses were violent, it just tended to be
that one person was considerably stronger than the other.(3)
Aggressive behavior has been a huge part of humankind since people first starting walking
somewhat erect. From our predecessor the killer ape to the intricacies of nuclear
warfare. Whether it is a caveman clubbing his enemy for stealing his food, or a highly
paid sniper sitting atop a roof waiting for a South American dictator to walk out of his
house, aggression follows us wherever we might go. Aggression is a force that is hard to
imagine and even harder to harness. Should people ever learn to control and thereby use
their aggression towards greater good, the walls we now know would crumble easily under
the forcing of such a force.
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