¶ … Humans Innately Aggressive?
Aggression is "an action…intended to harm someone in a verbal sense (sarcasm, insults, threats or playing out "nasty motives" -- and it can be a physical act, pushing, hitting, shooting at another person or otherwise aiming to do harm to someone (McCawley, 2001, p. 1). According to a definition from Shippenburg University aggression is any form of human behavior "…directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such harm." Still another definition of aggression (Buss) is found in an essay by Bushman and Anderson: Aggression is "…a response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism" (Bushman, et al., 1998). But the question that has been asked through the years is -- are people aggressive innately or do people learn to be aggressive? This paper delves into the issue, presents both sides (through the literature), and offers a conclusion.
The nature of aggression -- it is instinctive. The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis posits that aggression is "…always a consequence of frustration" and the very existence of frustration in a person's life "…always leads to some form of aggression" (McCawley, p. 2). That is, frustration may block a path the person had laid out to a specific goal and lead to aggression; the person notices that his or her way to that goal is being stymied and hence, "aggression arises" when frustration exists (McCawley, 2).
The "Revised Frustration-Aggression hypothesis" (Berkowitz) views aggression as an "externally elicited drive"; frustration creates a "readiness to respond in an aggressive manner" if in fact there are "proper environmental cues" that tell the frustrated person that indeed an aggressive response to the frustration...
Much has been said about violence and the media, but media in general is causing extensive health problems for our nation, too. A parenting Web site notes, "Children who consistently spend more than 4 hours per day watching TV are more likely to be overweight. Kids who view violent acts are more likely to show aggressive behavior but also fear that the world is scary and that something bad will
What is key about both of these quotations is the loss of identity that is endemic to both of them. The cadets who have survived the fourth-class system and who inflict ritualistic violence in the form of hazing on others have lost something of their true "selves," something that was stripped away to lead them to believe that they could rightfully engage in this sort of behavior to inflict
Erikson believed that having faith in others is key at this developmental stage. During this stage, the adolescent and/or young adult continually attempts to make the different aspects of oneself congruent (Friedman & Schustack, 2006). A person who successfully negotiates this stage has a clear understanding of who they are and all of the many facets of their personality. This person will have a clear identity and sense of
Gender and Identity Perhaps the most important question facing any human, be they male or female, is that of the discovery of their own identity. The majority of child development theories, from Freud onward, have dealt with the way in which children must learn to disengage their own identity from that of their parents (mothers in particular) and discover who they are as adults. Yet this process is far from over
Sometimes, it is even necessary to carry out certain clandestine operations like deceptions, clandestine collection of information, covert actions, and also the carrying out of the exercise of distributing disinformation or misleading information, which would mislead the suspected threat. The United States Intelligence Community is, as stated earlier, made up a number of different agencies. The Central Intelligence Agency is one of these. Also known popularly as the CIA, this
Sociocultural Perspective on Childhood "Children's capacity to choose appropriate behaviour is influenced by their developmental ability, temperament, interactions, life experiences and environmental factors." (Government of South Australia, 2004) Children's behavior is a reflection of a constellation of different factors, including but not limited to: genetics, environment, and epigenetics (the ways in which the environment interacts with and affects biology). The concept of what is a 'badly' behaved child is not a universal
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