Psychology of Aggression

It is important to define the term human aggression first: it is a social interaction between two or among more individual’s with the intention of inflicting damage or to reach something by harmful methods. In humans, aggression can be caused by various triggers, from frustration due to blocked goals to feeling disrespected.[1] Regarding our aspect of interest, it is very important to have insight about the fact that there is not only physical aggression which is better investigated, but also verbal assault, sexual harassment, humiliation etc. which can cause post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.[2] Thus, this indirect aggression can take a variety of forms leading to specific emotional effects included anger, anxiety, helplessness, irritability, feelings of resignation, sadness, depression, shock, apathy, disbelief, self-blame, sleep disturbance, headaches, body tension and soreness, fear of patients, fear of returning to the scene of the assault and difficulty returning to work[3].

Let us now summarize what aggressive behaviour involves:

1.It is firstly an intention to hurt the victim

2.The expectation of aversive consequences

3. The victim might have avoided the harm if given the opportunity[4]

There is a consensus that aggression is a form of negative or antisocial behaviour. A classic definition was proposed by Buss[5], who had a varying viewpoint than most social psychologists, and defined aggression as a negative form of social behaviour that causes problems between individuals, groups and societies, and defined its behaviourist characteristics as “a response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism”. However, this definition includes a large variety of behavioural levels that are not necessarily aggressive and on the other hand it doesn´t include for example aggressive thoughts and feelings.

Another definition that takes this into account came from Baron and Richardson[6] describes aggression as “any form of behaviour directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment”. In this definition there are three essential implications:

the motivation is to harm another human, but not the consequences of this violence

the aggressor knows that his/her action leads to harm of another person

painful medical treatment is not an aggressive action because the goal is not to harm the person

This definition seems to be accepted – it describes aggression as a treatment that is not desired by a target person, for example, physical or psychological violence or hurting his/her feelings..

But what about the term “aggression” itself? Many social scientists do not accept this expression and prefer to use the word “violence”. Violence is generally used in an institutional or a group context, aggression then as an individual manifestation.[7]

There are many general aggression and violence programs and tactics developed; nevertheless, all of them are based on the knowledge of psychological aspects of aggression, its anthropology and social bases of aggressive and violent behaviour.