NOBA

Aggression and Violence

Brad J. Bushman

This module discusses the causes and consequences of human aggression and violence. Both
internal and external causes are considered. Effective and ineffective techniques for reducing
aggression are also discussed.

Learning Objectives

• Explain the important components of the definition of aggression, and explain how
aggression differs from violence.

• Explain whether people think the world is less violent now than in the past, and whether
it actually is less violent. If there is a discrepancy between perception and reality, how can
it be resolved?

• Identify the internal causes and external causes of aggression. Compare and contrast how
the inner and external causes differ.

• Identify effective and ineffective approaches to reducing aggression.

Introduction

"Beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they."

-Yoda, renowned Jedi master in the Star Wars universe

Aggression and Violence 2

Aggression is indeed the dark side of human nature. Although aggression may have been
adaptive in our ancient past, it hardly seems adaptive today. For example, on 14 December
2012 Adam Lanza, age 20, first killed his mother in their home, and then went to an elementary
school in Newtown, Connecticut and began shooting, killing 20 children and 6 school
employees, before killing himself. When incidents such as these happen, we want to know
what caused them. Although it is impossible to know what motivated a particular individual
such as Lanza to commit the Newtown school shooting, for decades researchers have studied
the internal and external factors that influence aggression and violence. We consider some
of these factors in this module.

Before we get too far, let’s begin by

defining the term “aggression.” Laypeople
and researchers often use the term
“aggression” differently. Laypeople might
describe a salesperson that tries really
hard to sell them something as
“aggressive.” The salesperson does not,
however, want to harm potential
customers. Most researchers define
aggression as any behavior intended to
harm another person who does not want
to be harmed (Baron & Richardson, 1994).
This definition includes three important
features. First, aggression is a behavior—
you can see it. Aggression is not an
internal response, such as having angry
How much do internal causes such as personality versus external
feelings or aggressive thoughts (although
causes such as situations play in aggression? [Image: Dan4th
such internal responses can increase the
Nicolas, https://goo.gl/RtC4Hi, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]
likelihood of actual aggression). Second,
aggression is intentional rather than accidental. For example, a dentist might intentionally
give a patient a shot of Novocain (which hurts!), but the goal is to help rather than harm the
patient. Third, the victim wants to avoid the harm. Thus, suicide and sadomasochistic sex play
would not be called aggression because the victim actively seeks to be harmed.

Researchers and laypeople also differ in their use of the term violence. A meteorologist might
call a storm “violent” if it has intense winds, rain, thunder, lightning, or hail. Researchers define
violence as aggression intended to cause extreme physical harm (e.g., injury, death). Thus,
all violent acts are aggressive, but not all aggressive acts are violent. For example, screaming
and swearing at another person is aggressive, but not violent.
Aggression and Violence 3

Figure 1. Rate of battle deaths in state-based armed conflicts, 1946-2008. Civilian and military battle
deaths in state-based armed conflicts, divided by world population. Sources: UCDP/PRIO Armed
Conflict Dataset; see Human Security Report Project (2007), based on data from Lacina and Gleditsch
(2005), updated in 2010 by Tara Cooper. “Best” estimate used when available; otherwise the geometric
mean of the “High” and “Low” estimates is used. World population figures from U.S. Census Bureau
(2010). Population data for 1946-1949 were taken from McEvedy and Jones (1978), and multiplied by
1.01 to make them commensurate with the rest. From Pinker (2011, p. 301). Copyright permission

granted by Steven Pinker.

The good news is that the level of violence in the world is decreasing over time—by millennia,
century, and even decade (Pinker, 2011). Studies of body counts, such as the proportion of
prehistoric skeletons with axe and arrowhead wounds, suggest that prehistoric societies were
far more violent than those today. Estimates show that if the wars of the 20th century had
killed the same proportion of the population as ancient tribal wars did, then the death toll
would have been 20 times higher—2 billion rather than 100 million. More recent data show
that murder rates in Europe have decreased dramatically since the Middle Ages. For example,
estimated murders in England dropped from 24 per 100,000 in the 14th century to 0.6 per
100,000 by the early 1960s. The major decline in violence occurred in the 17th century during
the “Age of Reason,” which began in the Netherlands and England and then spread to other
European countries. Global violence has also steadily decreased since the middle of the 20th
century. For example, the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more
than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to fewer than 2,000 per year in the 2000s. There have also
been global declines in the number of armed conflicts and combat deaths, the number of
military coups, and the number of deadly violence campaigns waged against civilians. For
Aggression and Violence 4

example, Figure 1 shows the number of battle deaths per 100,000 people per year over 60
years (see Pinker, 2011, p. 301). As can be seen, battle deaths of all types (civil, colonial,
interstate, internationalized civil) have decreased over time. The claim that violence has
decreased dramatically over time may seem hard to believe in today’s digital age when we
are constantly bombarded by scenes of violence in the media. In the news media, the top
stories are the most violent ones—“If it bleeds it leads,” so the saying goes. Citizen journalists
around the world also use social media to “show and tell” the world about unjustified acts of
violence. Because violent images are more available to us now than ever before, we incorrectly
assume that violence levels are also higher. Our tendency to overestimate the amount of
violence in the world is due to the availability heuristic, which is the tendency to judge the
frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind.
Because we are frequently exposed to scenes of violence in the mass media, acts of violence
are readily accessible in memory and come to mind easily, so we assume violence is more
common than it actually is.

Human aggression is very complex and is caused by multiple factors. We will consider a few
of the most important internal and external causes of aggression. Internal causes include
anything the individual brings to the situation that increases the probability of aggression.
External causes include anything in the environment that increases the probability of
aggression. Finally, we will consider a few strategies for reducing aggression.

Internal Factors

Age

At what age are people most aggressive? You might be surprised to learn that toddlers 1 to
3 years old are most aggressive. Toddlers often rely on physical aggression to resolve conflict
and get what they want. In free play situations, researchers have found that 25 percent of
their interactions are aggressive (Tremblay, 2000). No other group of individuals (e.g., Mafia,
street gangs) resorts to aggression 25 percent of the time. Fortunately for the rest of us, most
toddler aggression isn’t severe enough to qualify as violence because they don’t use weapons,
such as guns and knives. As children grow older, they learn to inhibit their aggressive impulses
and resolve conflict using nonaggressive means, such as compromise and negotiation.
Although most people become less aggressive over time, a small subset of people becomes
more aggressive over time. The most dangerous years for this small subset of people (and for
society as a whole) are late adolescence and early adulthood. For example, 18- to 24-year-
olds commit most murders in the U.S. (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2012).
Aggression and Violence 5

Gender

At all ages, males tend to be more physically aggressive than females. However, it would be
wrong to think that females are never physically aggressive. Females do use physical
aggression, especially when they are provoked by other females (Collins, Quigley, & Leonard,
2007). Among heterosexual partners, women are actually slightly more likely than men to use
physical aggression (Archer, 2000). However, when men do use physical aggression, they are
more likely than women to cause serious injuries and even death to their partners. When
people are strongly provoked, gender differences in aggression shrink (Bettencourt & Miller,
1996).

Females are much more likely than males to engage in relational aggression, defined as
intentionally harming another person’s social relationships, feelings of acceptance, or
inclusion within a group (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Examples of relational aggression include
gossiping, spreading rumors, withdrawing affection to get what you want, excluding someone
from your circle of friends, and giving someone the “silent treatment.”

Both physical and relational aggression are serious problems in schools and among

adolescents. [Image: Elizabet21, https://goo.gl/klf5Pg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/vUS6LW]

Personality Traits Related to Aggression

Aggression and Violence 6

Some people seem to be cranky and aggressive almost all the time. Aggressiveness is almost
as stable as intelligence over time (Olweus, 1979). Individual differences in aggressiveness are
often assessed using self-report questionnaires such as the “Aggression Questionnaire” (Buss
& Perry, 1992), which includes items such as “I get into fights a little more than the average
person” and “When frustrated, I let my irritation show.” Scores on these questionnaires are
positively related to actual aggressive and violent behaviors (Anderson & Bushman, 1997).

The components of the “Dark Triad of Personality”—narcissism, psychopathy, and

Machiavellianism—are also related to aggression (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The term
“narcissism” comes from the mythical Greek character Narcissus who fell in love with his own
image reflected in the water. Narcissists have inflated egos, and they lash out aggressively
against others when their inflated egos are threatened (e.g., Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).
It is a common myth that aggressive people have low self-esteem (Bushman et al., 2009).
Psychopaths are people who lack empathy for others. One of the strongest deterrents of
aggression is empathy, which psychopaths lack. The term “Machiavellianism” comes from the
Italian philosopher and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who advocated using any means necessary
to gain raw political power, including aggression and violence.

Hostile Cognitive Biases

One key to keeping aggression in check is to give people the benefit of the doubt. Some people,
however, do just the opposite. There are three hostile cognitive biases. The hostile attribution
bias is the tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as hostile actions (Dodge, 1980).
For example, if a person bumps into you, a hostile attribution would be that the person did
it on purpose and wants to hurt you. The hostile perception bias is the tendency to perceive
social interactions in general as being aggressive (Dill et al., 1997). For example, if you see two
people talking in an animated fashion, a hostile perception would be that they are fighting
with each other. The hostile expectation bias is the tendency to expect others to react to
potential conflicts with aggression (Dill et al., 1997). For example, if you bump into another
person, a hostile expectation would be that the person will assume that you did it on purpose
and will attack you in return. People with hostile cognitive biases view the world as a hostile
place.

External Factors

Frustration and Other Unpleasant Events

Aggression and Violence 7

One of the earliest theories of aggression

proposed that aggression is caused by
frustration, which was defined as
blocking goal-directed behavior (Dollard
et al., 1939). For example, if you are
standing in a long line to purchase a
ticket, it is frustrating when someone
crowds in front of you. This theory was
later expanded to say that all unpleasant
events, not just frustrations, cause
aggression (Berkowitz, 1989). Unpleasant
events such as frustrations, provocations,
social rejections, hot temperatures, loud
noises, bad air (e.g., pollution, foul odors,
secondhand smoke), and crowding can
Are there some situations that are particularly frustrating to you –
all cause aggression. Unpleasant events
friends not texting you back, no wi-fi connection available, someone
automatically trigger a fight–flight
walking at a slow pace in front of you? These situations make make
you more likely than usual to behave aggressively. [Image: Syd response.
Daoust, https://goo.gl/Qn9HMu, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/

iF4hmM] Alcohol

Alcohol has long been associated with aggression and violence. In fact, sometimes alcohol is
deliberately used to promote aggression. It has been standard practice for many centuries to
issue soldiers some alcohol before they went into battle, both to increase aggression and
reduce fear (Keegan, 1993). There is ample evidence of a link between alcohol and aggression,
including evidence from experimental studies showing that consuming alcohol can cause an
increase in aggression (e.g., Lipsey, Wilson, Cohen, & Derzon, 1997). Most theories of
intoxicated aggression fall into one of two categories: (a) pharmacological theories that focus
on how alcohol disrupts cognitive processes, and (b) expectancy theories that focus on how
social attitudes about alcohol facilitate aggression. Normally, people have strong inhibitions
against behaving aggressively, and pharmacological models focus on how alcohol reduces
these inhibitions. To use a car analogy, alcohol increases aggression by cutting the brake line
rather than by stepping on the gas. How does alcohol cut the brake line? Alcohol disrupts
cognitive executive functions that help us organize, plan, achieve goals, and inhibit
inappropriate behaviors (Giancola, 2000). Alcohol also reduces glucose, which provides energy
to the brain for self-control (Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007). Alcohol has a “myopic” effect on
attention—it causes people to focus attention only on the most salient features of a situation
and not pay attention to more subtle features (Steele & Josephs, 1990). In some places where
Aggression and Violence 8

alcohol is consumed (e.g., crowded bar), provocations can be salient. Alcohol also reduces
self-awareness, which decreases attention to internal standards against behaving aggressively
(Hull, 1981).

According to expectancy theories, alcohol increases aggression because people expect it to.
In our brains, alcohol and aggression are strongly linked together. Indeed, research shows
that subliminally exposing people to alcohol-related words (e.g., vodka) can make them more
aggressive, even though they do not drink one drop of alcohol (Subra et al., 2010). In many
cultures, drinking occasions are culturally agreed-on “time out” periods where people are not
held responsible for their actions (MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969). Those who behave
aggressively when intoxicated sometimes “blame the bottle” for their aggressive actions.

Does this research evidence mean that aggression is somehow contained in alcohol? No.
Alcohol increases rather than causes aggressive tendencies. Factors that normally increase
aggression (e.g., frustrations and other unpleasant events, aggressive cues) have a stronger
effect on intoxicated people than on sober people (Bushman, 1997). In other words, alcohol
mainly seems to increase aggression in combination with other factors. If someone insults or
attacks you, your response will probably be more aggressive if you are drunk than sober.
When there is no provocation, however, the effect of alcohol on aggression may be negligible.
Plenty of people enjoy an occasional drink without becoming aggressive.

Reducing Aggression

Most people are greatly concerned about the amount of aggression in society. Aggression
directly interferes with our basic needs of safety and security. Thus, it is urgent to find ways
to reduce aggression. Because there is no single cause for aggression, it is difficult to design
effective treatments. A treatment that works for one individual may not work for another
individual. And some extremely aggressive people, such as psychopaths, are considered to
be untreatable. Indeed, many people have started to accept the fact that aggression and
violence have become an inevitable, intrinsic part of our society. This being said, there certainly
are things that can be done to reduce aggression and violence. Before discussing some
effective methods for reducing aggression, two ineffective methods need to be debunked:
catharsis and punishment.

Catharsis

The term catharsis dates back to Aristotle and means to cleanse or purge. Aristotle taught
that viewing tragic plays gave people emotional release from negative emotions. In Greek
Aggression and Violence 9

tragedy, the heroes didn’t just grow old and retire—they are often murdered. Sigmund Freud
revived the ancient notion of catharsis by proposing that people should express their bottled-
up anger. Freud believed if they repressed it, negative emotions would build up inside the
individual and surface as psychological disorders. According to catharsis theory, acting
aggressively or even viewing aggression purges angry feelings and aggressive impulses into
harmless channels. Unfortunately for catharsis theory, research shows the opposite often
occurs (e.g., Geen & Quanty, 1977).

Catharsis is one of the ways to appropriately deal with aggression because it make anger impossible to

sustain. [Image: Peter Conlan https://unsplash.com/photos/LEgwEaBVGMo https://unsplash.com/license]

If venting anger doesn’t get rid of it, what does? All emotions, including anger, consist of bodily
states (e.g., arousal) and mental meanings. To get rid of anger, you can focus on either of
those. Anger can be reduced by getting rid of the arousal state, such as by relaxing, listening
to calming music, or counting to 10 before responding. Mental tactics can also reduce anger,
such as by reframing the situation or by distracting oneself and turning one’s attention to
more pleasant topics. Incompatible behaviors can also help get rid of anger. For example,
petting a puppy, watching a comedy, kissing your lover, or helping someone in need, because
those acts are incompatible with anger and, therefore, they make the angry state impossible
to sustain (e.g., Baron, 1976). Viewing the provocative situation from a more distant
perspective, such as that of a fly on the wall, also helps (Mischkowski, Kross, & Bushman, 2012).
Aggression and Violence 10

Punishment

Most cultures assume that punishment is an effective way to deter aggression and violence.
Punishment is defined as inflicting pain or removing pleasure for a misdeed. Punishment can
range in intensity from spanking a child to executing a convicted killer. Parents use it,
organizations use it, and governments use it, but does it work? Today, aggression researchers
have their doubts. Punishment is most effective when it is: (a) intense, (b) prompt, (c) applied
consistently and with certainty, (d) perceived as justified, and (e) possible to replace the
undesirable punished behavior with a desirable alternative behavior (Berkowitz, 1993). Even
if punishment occurs under these ideal conditions, it may only suppress aggressive behavior
temporarily, and it has several undesirable long-term consequences. Most important,
punishment models the aggressive behavior it seeks to prevent. Longitudinal studies have
shown that children who are physically punished by their parents at home are more aggressive
outside the home, such as in school (e.g., Lefkowitz, Huesmann, & Eron, 1978). Because
punishment is unpleasant, it can also trigger aggression just like other unpleasant events.

Successful Interventions

Although specific aggression intervention

strategies cannot be discussed in any
detail here, there are two important
general points to be made. First,
successful interventions target as many
causes of aggression as possible and
attempt to tackle them collectively.
Interventions that are narrowly focused
at removing a single cause of aggression,
however well conducted, are bound to
fail. In general, external causes are easier
to change than internal causes. For
example, one can reduce alcohol
consumption, and make unpleasant
situations more tolerable (e.g., use air
conditioners when it is hot, reduce
One of the ways to circumvent the violent reactions of children who
may eventually grow up to be aggressive adults is to model
crowding in stressful environments such
constructive responses to stress and frustration. [Image: Vernon as prisons and psychiatric wards).
Barford School Library, https://goo.gl/ByOiBc, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0,

https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF] Second, aggression problems are best

Aggression and Violence 11

treated in early development, when people are still malleable. As was mentioned previously,
aggression is very stable over time, almost as stable as intelligence. If young children display
excessive levels of aggression (often in the form of hitting, biting, or kicking), it places them
at high risk for becoming violent adolescents and even violent adults. It is much more difficult
to alter aggressive behaviors when they are part of an adult personality, than when they are
still in development.

Yoda warned that anger, fear, and aggression are the dark side of the Force. They are also the
dark side of human nature. Fortunately, aggression and violence are decreasing over time,
and this trend should continue. We also know a lot more now than ever before about what
factors increase aggression and how to treat aggressive behavior problems. When Luke
Skywalker was going to enter the dark cave on Degobah (the fictional Star Wars planet), Yoda
said, “Your weapons, you will not need them.” Hopefully, there will come a time in the not-
too-distant future when people all over the world will no longer need weapons.
Aggression and Violence 12

Outside Resources

Book: Bushman, B. J., & Huesmann, L. R. (2010). Aggression. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G.
Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed.) (pp. 833-863). New York: John Wiley &
Sons.

TED Talk: Zak Ebrahim

https://www.ted.com/talks/zak_ebrahim_i_am_the_son_of_a_terrorist_here_s_how_i_chose_­
peace?language=en#t-528075

Video: From the Inquisitive Mind website, Brad Bushman conducts a short review of
terminology and important research concerning aggression and violence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGfwflwazJ4

Discussion Questions

1. Discuss whether different examples (hypothetical and real) meet the definition of
aggression and the definition of violence.

2. Consider the various causes of aggression described in this module and elsewhere, and
discuss whether they can be changed to reduce aggression, and if so how.
Aggression and Violence 13

Vocabulary

Aggression
Any behavior intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed.

Availability heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant
instances come to mind.

Catharsis
Greek term that means to cleanse or purge. Applied to aggression, catharsis is the belief that
acting aggressively or even viewing aggression purges angry feelings and aggressive impulses
into harmless channels.

Hostile attribution bias

The tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as aggressive.

Hostile expectation bias

The tendency to assume that people will react to potential conflicts with aggression.

Hostile perception bias

The tendency to perceive social interactions in general as being aggressive.

Punishment
Inflicting pain or removing pleasure for a misdeed. Punishment decreases the likelihood that
a behavior will be repeated.

Relational aggression
Intentionally harming another person’s social relationships, feelings of acceptance, or
inclusion within a group.

Violence
Aggression intended to cause extreme physical harm, such as injury or death.
Aggression and Violence 14

References

Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (1997). External validity of “trivial” experiments: The case of
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Archer, J. (2000). Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic

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Baron, R. A., & Richardson, D. R. (1994). Human aggression (2nd ed.). New York: Plenum Press.

Berkowitz, L. (1989). Frustration-aggression hypothesis: Examination and reformulation.

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Aggression and Violence 15

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Aggression and Violence 16

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away in April 2021. For more information, please see http://noba.to/78vdj2x5. Carol Diener
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University of Illinois. Both Ed and Carol are award- winning university teachers.

Acknowledgements

The Diener Education Fund would like to acknowledge the following individuals and companies
for their contribution to the Noba Project: Robert Biswas-Diener as Managing Editor, Peter
Lindberg as the former Operations Manager, and Nadezhda Lyubchik as the current
Operations Manager; The Other Firm for user experience design and web development;
Sockeye Creative for their work on brand and identity development; Arthur Mount for
illustrations; Chad Hurst for photography; EEI Communications for manuscript proofreading;
Marissa Diener, Shigehiro Oishi, Daniel Simons, Robert Levine, Lorin Lachs and Thomas Sander
for their feedback and suggestions in the early stages of the project.
Copyright

R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba Textbook Series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF
Publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/63vj7ykn

Copyright © 2021 by Diener Education Fund. This material is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy
of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US.

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion
of a Website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or the Diener Education Fund,
and the Diener Education Fund does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented
at these sites.

Contact Information:

Noba Project
www.nobaproject.com
[email protected]
How to cite a Noba chapter using APA Style

Bushman, B. J. (2021). Aggression and violence. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba
textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from
http://noba.to/63vj7ykn