8. To be Violent or Aggressive

"Aggression is behaviour that results in harm or destruction or defeat of others " (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2007, p. 30).

"Violence is the expression of hostility and rage with the intent to injure or damage people or property through physical force" (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2007, p. 982). 

Marcus (2007, p. 10) does not equate aggression and violence, but puts both notions on the same continuum of intensity. Both are supposed to cause damage to the other, only that aggression can be equalled with a slap and violence with street fights, where weapons are also used (ibid.). I can not agree with this claim even if Marcus refers to interpersonal aggression and violence. In previous chapter I have already pointed out several forms of aggression and violence, demonstrating that aggression and violence are connected but not necessarily conditioned phenomena. Hacker (1985, p. 31) writes that all violence is aggressive, but not all aggression is expressed through violence. He is convinced that violence is only the most entropic, regressive form of aggression. Thus both notions could easily be found in Marcus’s continuum of intensity. I presume that aggression is not inevitably present in all violent acts, but agree that aggressive tensions are not necessarily expressed as violence. Furthermore I suppose that the terms aggression and violence are not synonyms or expressions that would depict different intensities of harm caused to another person[9]. Both terms are frequently misused, misunderstood and inconsistently explained. Both notions are often mistaken or the same phenomenon is expressed by both. For example the statement ‘state X performs aggression toward state Y’ is not completely true in the context of a war between two countries. State X has maybe violently intruded on the territory of state Y, whereby soldiers of X were aggressively killing soldiers of Y. They performed violence where anger, fear and hate were present. These emotions have motivated aggressive behaviour that has evolved into violence. In the case that state X has won Y's army with bombing and rocketing, whereby the people performing violence were not emotionally aroused and even less aggressive, we cannot speak about aggression against the other state, we can speak about violence. 

Oliveira et al. (2000, pp. 13-16) relate violence with the dominant class’s repression. Due to economic changes, unequal distribution of capital and paranoid sensations of being threatened, the ruling classes implemented violent methods to control and dominate. They claim that regionally oriented capitalism has centralised the dynamic developmental sources in Brazil, which consequently left a poor distribution of capital. The majority of the population does not have access to capital - therefore people have to fight for it, or protest against established socio-economic situations - which provokes institutional violence in the ruling classes. On the other hand they define aggression as a way of expressing frustration and as the marginal behaviour of the excluded population. According to them, aggression is the consequence of poverty, the struggle for capital and the transformed personality of the Bahian population, due to modernisation and industrialisation that have substituted the previous latifundia system (ibid.). Abramovay et al. (1999, p. 57) understands aggression as a specific form of behaviour and outcome of individuals’ personality characteristics and their socialisation. Aggression can be expressed with an individual’s reactions and his functioning. Violence for them is a set of social situations that change through time and space, from one historical period to another. It is a physical intervention of an individual or the group in the integrity of another individual or group, yet sometimes it is also auto-directed. They refer above all to crime, suicide and police interventions.

Contrary to the above cited works, evolutionary psychologists do not use the term violence, but write about different forms of aggressive behaviour. They differentiate for example between aggressive behaviour that is planned and deliberate and not driven by emotions and the one that is emotionally charged. Campbell (2005, p. 629) describes two types of aggression: proactive or predatory aggression and reactive, defensive, hostile or affective aggression. The first type has an extrinsic reward as a goal with harm inflicted merely as a tool to that end. Such acts are planned, not responsive to threat, and are characterized by an absence of anger and arousal. The second type is the response to antecedent conditions such as goal blocking or provocations and can also be the response to environmental irritants and life situations. Responses are primarily interpersonal and hostile in nature, anger is emphasized as an emotional precursor or concomitant. Geen (1998, p. 2) differentiates between instrumental aggression and affective aggression. The first type may involve strong emotions but is motivated primarily by concerns other than the harm-doing itself. For the second type harming the victim is the main motive of the aggressor. In what follows I will include proactive and instrumental aggression into the domain of violence, while reactive or affective aggression will be treated as aggression and/or violence. My differentiation between aggression and violence is not identical to Hacker's, Geen's or any other evolutionary division. My differentiation considers also numerous socio-cultural factors that influence the appearance of aggression and violence as well as some lay definitions of both notions in Salvador.