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In the first chapter in the course text, in the section, entitled…
In the first chapter in the course text, in the section, entitled “What is Aggression?” the author offers a concise definition of aggression, and then discusses three implications of the definition.
Discuss the definition and discuss how the implications are related to the definition. Then indicate how the definition and the three implications fit into your personal thoughts about aggression. Connect your thoughts back to the definition. In your opinion do the definition and the implications adequately cover the topic of aggression? Or does something else need to be added or changed?
What is Aggression?
The term “aggression” is as firmly established in ordinary language as it is in the vocabulary of social psychologists. Unfortunately, using the same term does not necessarily imply agreement about what exactly it is supposed to mean, and this is clearly the case with aggression. For example, when prompted for their understanding of aggression, laypersons often talk about “good” or “healthy” aggression as opposed to “bad” aggression. However, most social psychologists have focused on aggression as a negative form of social behaviour that causes problems between individuals, groups, and societies.
Beyond the basic consensus about conceptualising aggression as a form of negative or antisocial behaviour, more precise definitions are needed to lay down the criteria for a specific behaviour to be categorised as “aggressive.” A classic definition was proposed by Buss (1961, p. 1), who characterised aggression as “a response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism.” However, this purely behaviourist definition is too broad in some ways and too narrow in others. It is too broad because it includes many forms of behaviour that should not be categorised as aggression, such as accidental infliction of harm. At the same time, it is too narrow because it excludes all non-behavioural processes, such as thoughts and feelings, and behaviours that are intended to cause harm but which, for whatever reason, fail to achieve their objective.
Additional aspects were subsequently included to address the limitations of a purely behaviourist definition (for a comprehensive discussion, see also Tedeschi & Felson, 1994, Chapter 6). For a person’s behaviour to qualify as aggression, the behaviour must be carried out with the intention of inflicting harm on the target, which in turn presupposes the anticipation that the action will produce a particular outcome. Introducing these additional criteria means that excluded from the definition are behaviours that result in unintended harm or injury (e.g., by accident or through lack of foresight). At the same time, the definition includes behaviours that are aimed at harming another person but which, for whatever reason, do not have the intended consequences. According to this criterion, a gunshot that misses its target represents an aggressive act even though not a hair on the target’s head may have been harmed. Focusing on the person’s intention to harm also allows non-action, such as the deliberate withholding of care or failure to help a person in need, to be classified as aggressive. A further specification refers to the desire of the target person to avoid the harmful treatment. This is to exclude cases of harm inflicted with the target person’s consent, such as painful medical procedures or injury inflicted in the context of sadomasochistic sexual practices.
A concise definition that takes these considerations into account was offered by Baron and Richardson (1994, p. 7). They suggested that the term “aggression” should be used to describe “any form of behavior directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment.” Their definition is widely accepted (Parrott & Giancola, 2007), and it has also been adopted in the present volume. Broadly speaking, “harm” denotes any form of treatment that is not wanted by the target persons, such as causing them physical injury, hurting their feelings, damaging their social relationships by spreading rumours about them, or taking away or destroying their cherished possessions. It is important to add that, of course, individuals may act aggressively against themselves up to the point of taking their own life. However, this form of self-inflicted harm does not fall within the above definition, as it does not involve harming “another person who is motivated to avoid such treatment.” Therefore self-harm is outside the focus of the social psychological perspective on aggression adopted in this volume.
In terms of distinguishing aggression from other forms of social behaviour, the definition offered by Baron and Richardson (1994) has three important implications:
IMPLICATIONS
1. Aggressive behaviour is characterised by its underlying motivation (to harm or injure another living being), not by its consequences (whether or not harm or injury actually occurs). This means that a behaviour is regarded as aggressive if it was guided by the intention to harm, even if no damage was done to the target. As noted above, a shot fired from a gun may miss its target, but if it was intended to hit the target, pulling the trigger is nonetheless an aggressive act.
2. A necessary feature of the intention to harm is the actor’s understanding that the behaviour in question has the potential to cause harm or injury to the target. If one person’s actions lead to harm or injury of another, but the actor could not have anticipated that the behaviour could lead to those adverse effects, they do not represent instances of aggression. They could be due to carelessness or incompetence, but they do not reflect an intention to harm.
3. Defining aggression as behaviour that the target would want to avoid means that actions that may cause harm but which are performed with the target’s consent, such as painful medical treatment, do not represent instances of aggression.
