HUMAN AGGRESSION

[Music] these teenagers belong to a gang the young skulls in this film we will follow the gang through an ordinary day and see what part aggression plays in the lives of its members for aggression is not something apart from life but is deeply interwoven with [Music] it we will examine modern psychological theory and research that tells us where aggression comes from how it is shaped and what purposes it serves aggression is not just horsing around aggression is not just an emotion such as anger no aggression is an action taken with the purpose of inflicting harm people may act aggressively against other people property or symbols aggression often results from a specific provocation such as a frustration invasion of territory or a threat but the nature of the triggering incident is not always [Applause] [Music] [Applause] clear perhaps the gang was splashed by the car and is now retaliating Perhaps it is a symbol of something they resent aggression is present in all animal species and is as much a product of evolutionary development as wings claws and eyes it is present because it is indispensable for survival animals fight to establish a dominance hierarchy a pecking order which determines which male has Priority Access to food and to females animals fight to protect territory one of these fidler crabs has invaded the territory of the other and is attacked and animals attack other animals for food but almost always their prey is of another species aggression is often expressed as a threat rather than a consummated act threats are often enough to decide who will back down and who will prevail in this gang an aggressive Aura sends an intimidating message to those around it a message that the gang is to be respected and not messed [Music] with so you tell your supre if he want [ __ ] back he come down here and if my boy if any of my if any of y'all want to [ __ ] this dude up y got my permission all right y got my permission he told me quit and he's wearing blue angel colors right I'm telling you man if y'all want to [ __ ] him up go ahead territoriality plays its part in provoking human aggression here a member of a competing gang the Blue Angels is challenged as he attempts to enter the Turk of the young skulls the young skulls grab the colors of the Blue Angels and they'll get the colors back but your prayers might not come back through the use of symbols and language humans engage in a process of pseudo speciation treating the outg group as if it were another species treating symbolic distinctions as if they were biological ones then acting as Predators toward them conflicts over territory are not limited to lower class youths middle class residents of this Brooklyn neighborhood are equally willing to fight against the incursion of [Applause] Outsiders more generally any challenge to the accepted social order May trigger an aggressive response one rule of social life is that when standing online it is first come first served here a Confederate will ignore the rule the violation of the rule provokes aggressive gestures and threats I don't even know these two suckers man they never dominance and the challenge to dominance plays a role also in human aggression the lad sitting on the ground has challenged the hierarchy of the gang understand don't punishment I never noce go get on punishment you have sold your soul to the devil this is the devil and we are his demons so you in hell now you and you going to burn the leadership reasserts its power by forcing him to undergo a ritualized [Applause] beating oh my God it's not hard to find instances of aggression in the real world but the problem for the psychologist is to find a way to study aggression aggressive behavior in a precise exact way in laboratory situations where he has some control and where the person who's the object of aggression the target of aggression does not actually get hurt I wrestled with this problem for a long time and in 1960 a simple solution occurred to me and that is a subject could be allowed to administer a graded series of shocks to another person I drew a set of sketches of a shock machine it was later to be called an aggression machine I'm moved on to use this machine for the study of obedience but other investigators Arnold bus for example used the machine to study aggression per se he showed us that men will administer higher levels of shock than women Leonard burkowitz studied the effects of frustration and the effects of arousal of imitation of aggressive action using this machine I think the machine was quite important for psychology because it allowed us to study aggressive behavior in the laboratory of course there are many shortcomings of this kind of study it's somewhat sterile it's a little bit artificial and so we also have to turn to the real world to study the Dynamics of aggression and in the real world young males of many species engage in aggressive play but the high arousal and competitiveness of aggressive play May easily explode into authentic aggression or sometimes the chance presence of an object May convert exuberance into a genuinely destructive act any simple object may be used as a weapon weapons serve as buffers they create distance between the aggressor and his victim and thus weaken inhibitions against aggressive action get [Music] out each member of the gang occupies a certain status high to low and the booze is passed around according to this hierarchy a all the time all all I hear man is that the dudes go to um the MC boots got you got got that's why you got but the low man is nonetheless frustrated when he fails to wet his throat with even a drop in the late 30s a group of Yale psychologists proposed that frustration always leads to aggression and that all aggression is the outcome of some prior frustration this frustration aggression hypothesis has been criticized for being overstated but it may yet have some validity a second hypothesis concerns the displacement of aggression when the frustrated person cannot Strike Back Against the source of frustration aggression will be displaced onto other objects or persons milgrim in shotland demonstrated in a recent experiment that frustration definitely provokes aggressive action in this experiment subjects come to a gift Distribution Center in order to receive a radio they had been promised in the control condition a sign on the office counter politely states that the office is temporarily closed because of illness and the subject was to kindly pick up his radio in another room of the building a minor inconvenience perhaps but no real frustration since the radio would soon be in hand among the office Furnishings a charity display for project hope with several dollar bills visible through the loose sight Bank the behavior of all subjects was observed by concealed video cameras the second condition was identical to the First with one exception a severe frustration was introduced the subject was Brusly informed that he would not receive the radio that had been promised de after severe frustration subjects broke into the charity box three times more often than in the UNF frustrating condition frustration is more likely to produce aggression when it is perceived as illegitimate frustration as when this girl tries to usurp the man's right to the phone without any particular justification the frustration seems more legitimate in the case of a pregnant woman and is thus responded to with greater equinity illegitimate frustration the reason the watch isn't ready is not perceived as valid and frustration leads to a blow up I am sorry sir this is not ready right now why not but we had something more important to do what's more important than my watch sir it's not ready I don't care just give me the watch I'll take you someplace else and get it fixed right it's all just give me the watch that's not company policy I don't care what company policy is I want the watch and I want it now legitimate frustration the frustration is just as real but a death in the jeweler's family makes it legitimate uh no I'm sorry your watch isn't ready yet you see the repairment had a death in his family oh oh I'm sorry a couple of days then yes certain sir okay thanks you're welcome Sigman Freud said that aggression is inevitable in human life it is an instinct that can never be eradicated but can only be channeled into more or less constructive lines yet modern psychology believes that its expression shaping and strength May well depend on social learning yeah she punishes me you know hitting me you know locking me up and all that my father doesn't live with me when I was a little kid that was the last time I see him when I get punished I got to be up State at 9:00 and I when I get hit I get hit with a stick mother used to beat me up like crazy used to hit me every day my father us to taste me all around the block bed for it the child grows into the man and perpetuates the tradition of violence and the fights among men do not resemble the sterile aggression we see in the movies in real fights people grapple scrape and hurt each other origin came back from ger from Germany back in the Nazi days the custos on used to do the torture to the Americans so that's what we got in our gangs too aaple for those who do wrong brutal parents may serve as models of aggression but the models may also be found in history here an especially aggressive segment of the gang models itself after the infamous gapo thing that will do the first hit before anybody many social psychologists think that the mass media and television in particular teach children to be aggressive in an experiment carried out by banura and Walters children were shown a film of an adult who repeatedly pummeled and struck an inflatable doll the frequency with which violence is depicted on television is very high by the time a child has grown to adolescence he has probably seen more than 10,000 acts of violence depicted on the TV screen in the second part of the experiment the children were allowed to play with the same doll shown in the film children who saw the film struck the doll more often and more vigorously than a control group of children who had not seen the film thus aggression shown in the mass media may serve as a model for social learning hey y they taking one our boys man no reason hey big man what's happening there is a special group of people whose job is to deal with aggression that has gotten out of hand the police psychologist Morton Bard has set up a program to train the police in psychological principles of intervention when people are at each other in Conflict situations it is the police who are called upon to serve as a third party to bring that dispute to some constructive outcome uh my research has been concerned with interpersonal conflict management with providing the police with the skills and the competence to bring about these resolutions now I think it should be noted that the closer and more intimate a human relationship the more likely it is that there be an aggressive interaction I take my boy and arrow take my flot what about the police how do you get along with the police we get along is the way same they get along with us man terrible if you put the third party in the position of getting between disputing party so to speak you expose that person to the most volatile of human aggressive motives on arriving at the scene of a dispute the very first thing that the officer must do is to identify possible sources or weapons of opportunity to secure the premises to separate the participants once having done that um he has to then ascertain the facts he has to participate in a process of gathering information to know how to gather the information how to process that information how to develop a plan about what he has gathered and then to make a move in implementing that plan throughout this film we have shown how aggression is not simply a property of an isolated person but is interwoven with the life of a group an experiment by mgrm measures the degree to which group pressure induces aggressive acts four people come to a laboratory to take part in a study on the effects of punishment on learning the man with the mustache will administer electric shocks he is the only real subject the others are Confederates he is the learner and will appear to receive electric shocks whenever he makes an error in his lesson the shocks may vary from 15 to 450 volts the expor explains that the shock actually used is to be the lowest shock level suggested by any of the three teachers on each trial blue boy girl grass hat incorrect the correct answer is blue girl incorrect answer as I mentioned earlier you three must decide the punishment to be administered let's try 15 volts okay 15 volts 15 volts the two Confederates rais the shock level one step on each trial the subject can hold down the shocks to 15 volts or he can be influenced by the others let's try 165 Vols 165 okay I think that's too much the punishment administered will be the lowest level suggested by any you3 I keep it down to 150 incorrect about a quarter of the subjects resist the group and hold the shock to the lowest levels on the generator half the subjects are somewhat influenced and hold the shock to intermediate levels another quarter completely capitulates to the group 3 300 300 incorrect 330 330 330 incorrect 375 375 me here [Music] White Cloud horse Rock House incorrect the correct answer is White Horse 450 400 50 volts 450 Society knows that aggression is too important to be left to laboratory subjects or to brawling adolescence it creates special institutions for the organized infliction of harm on an enemy our life is is you know in a way it's kind of really rough because once we get busted Society always got that Mark on us and they never let go see they never can give us a break they even scared to teach us law cuz they know we get around gave us already you know we want to start getting a little bit of roots in society but they don't want to give us the break so if they don't want to give us the break we go out there on our own and get ourselves together if they mess with us we going to scratch their eyes out yeah take my bean shooter with me the group not only pressures its members to act aggressively it provides justifications that excuse such aggression individual excuses appear more legitimate when they are accepted and ratified by the group as psychologists we have studied some of the origins and conditions of human aggression but in the end it is not enough that we understand we must use our knowledge to eliminate the imperfections of society and deprive aggression of its fertile soil former Attorney General Ramsey Clark sums it up this way the three things a society must work at constantly if it wishes to reduce aggression among its People First Health the mental and physical health the possibility of limiting aggression without major efforts there particularly in Mass Urban technologically advanced Society are very very limited second the total environment in which people have to live must be clean and quiet and decent and peaceful we've in so many ways through our environment glorified violence it would seem but finally and so often missed is the factor of Justice the idea that however healthy or however good the environment is people will not be aggressive toward each other when they perceive uh Injustice is wrong Aristotle told us that the chief and Universal cause of the Revolutionary impulse is the desire for equality and I think that will always be true both in interpersonal and in international relations we will not be happy with our lot we will not be resigned to Poverty we will not be resigned to disadvantage while it exists and therefore Justice must Prevail if um humans are not to be violent and aggressive toward one another [Music]