In experimental tests adults generally behave more puni- tively after they have seen others act aggressively than if they have not been ex- posed to aggressive modeling. This is especially true if the modeled aggressive conduct is legitimized by social justifications Desensitization and habituation to violence are reflected in decreases in physiological reactions to repeated exposure to displays of violence.
In addition to emotional desensitization, violence viewing can create be- havioral indifference to human aggression. In studies demonstrating the habit- uation effect, children who have had prior exposure to interpersonal violence are less likely to intervene in escalating aggression between children they are overseeing 24, 63, During the course of their daily lives, people have direct contact with only a small sector of the physical and social environment.
In their daily routines they travel the same routes, visit the same places, see essentially the same group of friends and work associates. Consequently, people form impressions of the social realities with which they have little or no contact partly from televised represen- tations of society.
Because the world of television is heavily populated with villainous and unscrupulous peopfe it can distort knowledge about the real world. Indeed, communications researchers have found that heavy viewers of television are less trustful of others and overestimate their chances of being criminally victimized more than do light viewers Heavy viewers see the society at large as more dangerous regardless of their educational level, sex, age, and amount of newspaper reading. Many of the misconceptions that people develop about certain occupations, nationaiities, ethnic groups, sex roles, social roles, and other aspects of life are cultivated through modeling of stereotypes by the media.
Too often their actions are based on such misconceptions. Symbolic modeling plays an especially significant role in the shaping and rapid spread of collective aggression.
Social diffusion of new styles and tactics of aggression conforms to the generalized pattern of most other contagious activities: new behavior is in- troduced by a salient example, it spreads rapidly in a contagious fashion, and it then either stabilizes or is discarded depending on its functional value.
Modeled solutions to problems that achieve some success are not only adopted by people facing similar difficulties, but they tend to spread as well to other troublesome areas. The model of collective protest is now widely used as a means of forcing change.
Airline hijacking provides another recent example of the rapid diffusion and decline of aggressive tactics. Air piracy was unheard of in the United States until an airliner was hijacked to Havana in Prior to that incident Cubans were hijacking planes to Miami. These incidents were followed by a wave of hijack- ings both in the United States and abroad, eventually involving 71 different countries.
Just as aggressive strategies are widely modeled, so are the counter- measures that prove effective in controlling modeled aggression. Modeling and reinforcement operate jointly in the social learning of aggres- sion in everyday life. Styles of aggression are largely learned through observa- tion, and refined through reinforced practice.
In cultures lacking aggressive models and devaluing injurious conduct, people live peaceably 1, 22, 37, 46, In other societies that provide extensive training in aggression, attach prestige to it, and make its use functional, people spend a great deal of time threatening, fighting, maim- ing, and killing each other 12, 17, 26, A theory must explain not only how aggressive patterns are acquired but also how they are activated and channeled.
It has been traditionally assumed that aggressive behavior is activated by an aggressive drive, According to the instinct doctrine, organisms are innately endowed with an aggressive drive that automatically builds up and must be discharged periodically through some form of aggressive behavior.
Despite intensive study, researchers have been unable to find an inborn autonomous drive of this type. For years, aggression was viewed as a product of frustration. In this concep- tion, frustration generates an aggressive drive which, in turn, motivates aggres- sive behavior. Frustration replaced instinct as the activating source, but the two theories are much alike in their social implications.
Since frustration is ever present, in both approaches people are continuously burdened with aggressive energy that must be drained from time to time.
The frustration-aggression theory was widely accepted until its limited explanatory value became apparent from growing evidence. Frustration has varied effects on behavior; aggression does not require frustration.
The diverse events subsumed under the omnibus term frustration do have one feature in common-they are all aversive. In social learning theory, rather than frustration generating an aggressive drive that is reducible only by in- jurious behavior, aversive stimulation produces a general state of emotional arousal that can facilitate any number of responses see Figure 2.
When distressed some people seek help and support; others increase achievement efforts; others display withdrawal and resignation; some aggress; others experience heightened somatic reactivity; still others anesthetize themselves against a miserable existence with drugs or alcohol; and most intensify constructive efforts to overcome the source of distress.
Several lines of evidence, reviewed in detail elsewhere 5 , lend greater validity to the arousal-prepotent response formulation than to the frustration- aggression view. Different emotions appear to have a similar physiological state 2. The same physiological state can be experienced phenomenologically as different emotions, depending upon what people see as the incitements, and how they interpret them 34, In individuals who are prone to behave aggres- sively, different sources of emotional arousal can heighten their aggression 52, In drive theories, the aroused aggressive drive presumably remains active until discharged by some form of aggression.
Actually, anger arousal dissipates rapidly, but it can be easily regenerated on later occasions through rumination on anger-provoking incidents. By thinking about past insulting treatment, people can work themselves into a rage long after their emotional reactions have subsided. Frustration or anger arousal is a facilitative, rather than a necessary, condi- tion for aggression.
Frustration tends to provoke aggression mainly in people who have learned to respond to aversive experiences with aggressive attitudes and conduct. Thus, after being frustrated, aggressively trained children behave more aggressively, whereas cooperatively trained children behave more cooper- atively There exists a large body of evidence that painful treatment, deprivation or delay of rewards, personal insults, failure experience, and obstructions, all of which are aversive, do not have uniform behavioral effects 4.
Some of these aversive antecedents convey injurious intent more clearly than others and therefore have greater aggression-provoking potential. If one wished to provoke aggression, one way to do so would be simply to hit another person, who is likely to oblige with a counterattack. To the extent that counteraggression discourages further assaults it is reinforced by pain reduction and thereby assumes high functional value in social interactions.
Social interchanges are typically escalated into physical aggression b y verbal threats and insults. In analyzing dyadic interchanges of assault-prone individuals, Toch 65 found that humiliating affronts and threats t o reputation and manly status emerged as major precipitants of violence. High sensitivity to devaluation was usually combined with deficient verbal skills for resolving disputes and restoring self-esteem without having to dispose of antagonists physically.
The counterattacks evoked by physical assaults are probably instigated more by humiliation than by physical pain. Explanations of collective aggression usually invoke impoverishment and discontent arising from privations as principal causal factors.
However, since most impoverished people do not aggress, the view that discontent breeds violence requires qualification. This issue is well illustrated in interpretations of urban riots in ghetto areas. Despite condemnation of their degrading and exploitative conditions of life, comparatively few of the disadvantaged took active measures to force warranted changes.
Even in cities that experienced civil disturbances, only a small percent of ghetto residents actively participated in the aggressive activities 39, 45, The critical question for social scientists to answer is not why some people who are subjected to aversive conditions aggress, but rather why a sizable majority of them acquiesce to dismal living conditions in the midst of affluent styles of life.
To invoke the frustration-aggression hypothesis, as is commonly done, is to disregard the more striking evidence that severe privation generally produces feelings of hopelessness and massive apathy. People give up trying when they lack a sense of personal efficacy and no longer expect their efforts to produce any beneficial results in an environment that is unresponsive or is consistently punishing 8, Comparative studies indicate that discontent produces aggression not in those who have lost hope, but in the more successful members whose assertive efforts iat social and economic betterment have been periodically reinforced.
Consequently, they have some reason to expect that they can effect change by coercive action 16, More recent explanations of violent protest emphasize relative deprivation, rather than the actual level of aversive conditions, as the instigator of collective aggression. In an analysis of conditions preceding major revolutions, Davies 20 reports that revolutions are most likely to occur when a period of social and economic advances that instills rising expectations is followed by a sharp reversal.
People judge their present gains not only in relation to those they secured in the past; they also compare their lot in life with the benefits accruing to others 7. Inequities between observed and experienced outcomes tend to create dis- content, whereas individuals may be satisfied with limited rewards as long as they are as good as what others are receiving.
Since most people who feel relatively deprived do not resort to violent action, aversive privation, like other forms of aversive treatment, is not in itself a sufficient cause of collective aggression. Additional social learning factors must be considered that determine whether discontent will take an aggressive form or some other behavioral expression. Using such a multideterminant approach, Gurr 30 examined the magnitude of civil disorder in Western nations as a function of three sets of factors.
The first is the level of social discontent arising from economic decline, oppressive restrictions, and social inequities. The sec- ond factor is the traditional acceptance of force to achieve social change. The third factor is the balance of coercive power between the system and the challengers as measured by amount of military, police, industrial, labor, and foreign support the protagonists can marshal1 on their side. The analysis reveals that when aggressive tactics are considered acceptable and challengers possess coercive power, they will use less extreme forms of collective aggression without requiring much discontent.
Revolutionary violence, however, requires widespread discontent and strong coercive power by challengers, while tactical traditions are of less importance. Aversive instigators of aggression have occupied a central role in psychological theorizing, often to the neglect of more important determinants; a great deal of human aggression, in fact, is prompted by anticipated positive consequences. Here, the instigator is the pull of expected benefits, rather than the push of painful treatment.
This positive source of motivation for aggression represents the second component in the motivational analysis in Figure 2. During the process of socialization, people are trained to obey orders. By rewarding compliance and punishing disobedience, directives issued in the form of authoritative commands elicit obedient aggression.
After this form of social control is established, legitimate authorities can secure obedient aggression from others, especially if the actions are presented as justified and necessary, and the issuers possess strong coercive power. Adults find it difficult to resist peer pressures calling for increasingly harmful actions just as they are averse to defying legitimized authority.
Seeing others carrying out punitive orders calmly likewise increases obedient aggression It is less difficult to hurt people on command when their suffering is not visible and when causal actions seem physically or temporally remote from their deleterious effects.
Mechanized forms of warfare, where masses of people can be put to death by destructive forces released remotely, illustrate such depersona- lized aggression. Obedience declines as the harmful consequences of destructive acts become increasingly more salient and personalized As the results of these and other studies show, it requires conducive social conditions rather than monstrous people to produce heinous deeds. The third major feature of the social learning formulation concerns the condi- tions that sustain aggressive responding.
This principle applies equally to aggression. Injurious modes of response, like other forms of social behavior, can be increased, eliminated and reinstated by altering the effects they produce, Three forms of outcomes-external, vicarious, and self- produced--hot only serve as separate sources of influence, but they interact in ways that weaken or enhance their effects on behavior.
Extrinsic rewards assume special importance in interpersonal aggression because such behavior, by its very nature, usually produces some costs among its diverse effects. People who get into fights, for example, will suffer pain and injury even though they eventually triumph over their opponents. Under non- coercive conditions, positive incentives are needed to overcome inhibitions arising from the aversive concomitants of aggression.
The positive incentives take a variety of forms. Aggression is often used by those lacking better alternatives because it is an effective means of securing desired tangible rewards.
Ordinarily docile animals will fight when aggressive attacks produce food or drink 3, Aggressive behavior is especially persistent when it is reinforced only intermittently, which is usually the case under the variable conditions of everyday life Aggressive styles of behavior are of ten adopted because they win approval and status rewards. When people are commended for behaving punitively they become pro- gressively more aggressive, whereas they display a relatively low level of aggres- sion when it is not treated as praiseworthy 28, Approval not only increases the specific aggressive responses that are socially reinforced but it tends to en- hance other forms of aggression as well 27, 41, People are often treated aversively by others from which they seek relief.
Coercive action that is not unduly hazardous is the most direct and quickest means of alleviating maltreatment, if only temporarily. Defensive forms of aggression are frequently reinforced by their capacity to terminate humiliating and painful treatment. Reinforcement through pain reduction is well docu- mented in studies showing that children who are victimized but terminate the abuse by successful counteraggression eventually become highly aggressive in their behavior In the social learning analysis, defensive aggression is sustained to a greater extent by anticipated consequences than by its instantaneous effects.
People will endure the pain of reprisals on expectations that their aggressive efforts will eventually remove deleterious conditions. Aggressive actions may also be partly maintained in the face of painful counterattack by anticipated costs of timidity.
In aggression-oriented circles, failure to fight back can arouse fear of future victimization and humiliation. A physical pummeling may, therefore, be far less distressing than repeated social derision or increased likelihood of future abuse.
Aggressive actions are therefore partly regulated on the basis of anticipated negative consequences. Being under cognitive and situa- tional control, restraints arising from external threats vary in dur'ability and in how widely they generalize beyond the prohibitive situations.
The effectiveness of punishment in controlling behavior is determined by a number of factors 4, Of special importance are the benefits derived through aggressive actions and the availability of alternative means of securing desired goals.
Other determinants of the suppressive power of punishment include the likelihood that aggression will be punished, and the nature, severity, timing, and duration of aversive consequences. In addition, the level of instiga- tion to aggression and the characteristics of the prohibitive agents influence how aggressors will respond under threat of punishment.
When alternative means are available for people to get what they seek, aggressive modes of behavior that carry high risk of punishment are rapidly discarded. Aggression control through punishment becomes more problematic when aggressive actions are socially or tangibly rewarded, and alternative means of securing desired outcomes are either unavailable, less effective in producing results, or not within the capabilities of the aggressor. Punishment is not only precarious as an external inhibitor of intermittently rewarded behavior, but its frequent use can inadvertantly promote aggression by modeling punitive modes of control Vicarious reinforcement operates primariEy through its informative function.
Since observed outcomes convey different types of information, they can have diverse behavioral effects. Models and observers often differ in distinguish- able ways so that behavior considered approvable for one may be punishable for the other, depending on discrepancies in sex, age, and social status.
When the same behavior produces unlike consequences for different members, observed rewards may not enhance the level of imitative aggressiveness When observed outcomes are judged personally attainable, they create incentive motivation. Seeing others' successes can function as a motivator by arousing in observers expectations that they can gain similar rewards for analo- gous performances.
In addition, valuation of people and activities can be significantly altered on the basis of observed consequences. Ordinarily, ob- served punishment tends to devalue the models and their behavior, whereas the same models become a source of emulation when their actions are admired. However, aggressors may gain, rather than lose, status in the eyes of their peers when they are punished for a style of behavior valued by the group, or when they aggress against institutional practices that violate the professed values of society.
It is for this reason that authoritative agencies are usually careful not to discipline challengers in ways that might martyr them. Restrained and principled use of coercive power elicits respect. When societal agents misuse their power to reward and punish, they undermine the legitimacy of their authority and arouse opposition. Seeing inequitable punishment, rather than securing compliance, may foster aggressive reprisals.
Indeed, activists sometimes attempt to rally supporters to their cause by selecting aggressive tactics calculated to provoke authorities to excessive countermeasures. People are not simply reactors to external influences; through self-generated inducements and self-produced consequences they exercise influence over their own behavior.
In social learning theory, a self-system is not a psychic agent that controls behavior. Rather, it refers to cognitive structures that provide the referential standards against which behavior is judged, and a set of subfunctions for the perception, evaluation, and regulation of action 6, 9. Figure 3 presents a diagrammatic representation of three main subfunctions in the self-regulation of behavior by self-produced incentives. Performance appraisals set the occasion for self-produced consequences.
Favor- able judgments give rise to rewarding self-reactions, whereas unfavorable appraisals activate negative self-reactions. At one extreme are individ- uals who have adopted self-reinforcement codes that make aggressive behavior a source of personal pride.
Such individuals readily engage in aggressive activi- ties and derive enhanced feelings of self-worth from physical conquests 11,65, Lacking self-reprimands for hurtful conduct, they are deterred from cruel acts mainly by reprisal threats.
Idiosyncratic self-systems of morality are not confined to individuals or fighting gangs. In aggressive cultures where prestige is closely tied to fighting prowess, members take considerable pride in aggres- sive exploits. After ethical and moral standards of conduct are adopted, anticipatory self- condemning reactions for violating personal standards ordinarily serve as self- deterrents against reprehensible acts.
Results of the study by Bandura and Walters 1I reveal how anticipatory self-reproach for repudiated aggression serves as a motivating influence to keep behavior in line with adopted standards. Adolescents who were compassionate in their dealing with others responded with self-disapproval, remorse, and attempts at reparation even when their aggressive activities were minor in nature. In contrast, assaultive boys experi- enced relatively few negative self-reactions over serious aggressive activities.
These differential self-reactive patterns are corroborated by Perry and Bussey 50 in laboratory tests. In the social learning analysis, moral people perform culpable acts through processes that disengage evaluative self-reactions from such conduct rather than due to defects in the development or the structure of their superegos 5.
Acquisition of self-regulatory capabilities does not create an invariant con- trol mechanism within a person. Self-evaluative influences do not operate unless activated, and many situational dynamics influence their selective activation.
Self-deterring consequences are likely to be activated most strongly when the causal connection between conduct and the detrimental effects it produces is unambigious. There are various means, however, by which self-evaluative consequences can be dissociated from censurable behavior. Figure 4 shows the several points in the process at which the disengagement can occur. One set of disengagement practices operates at the level of the behavior. People do not ordinarily engage in reprehensible conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality of their actions.
What is culpable can be made honorable through cognitive restructuring. In this process, reprehensible conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends.
Over the years, much destructive and reprehensible conduct has been perpetrated by decent, moral people in the name of religious principles and righteous ideologies. Acting on moral or ideological imperative reflects not an unconscious defense mechanism, but a conscious offense mechg- nism. Euphe- mistic language provides an additional convenient device for disguising re- prehensible activities and according them a respectable status.
Through con- voluted verbiage pernicious conduct is made benign and those who engage in it are relieved of a sense of personal agency Moral justifications and palliative characterizations are especially effective disinhibitors because they not only eliminate self-generated deterrents, but engage self-reward in the service of injurious, behavior. What was morally unacceptable becomes a source of self- pride. Another set of dissociative practices operates by obscuring or distorting the relationship between actions and the effects they cause.
People will behave in highly punitive ways they normally repudiate if a legitimate authority acknowl- edges responsibility for the consequences of the conduct 23, By displacing responsibility, people do not see themselves as personally accountable for their actions and are thus spared self-prohibiting reactions. They therefore act more aggressively when responsibility is obscured by a collective instrumentality The final set of disengagement practices operate at the level of the recipients of injurious effects.
The strength of self-evaluative reactions partly depends on how the people toward whom actions are directed are viewed. Maltreatment of individuals who are regarded as subhuman or debased is less apt to arouse self- reproof than if they are seen as human beings with dignifying qualities 10, Analysis of the cognitive concomitants of injurious behavior reveals that dehu- manization fosters a variety of self-exonerating maneuvers Many conditions of contemporary life are conducive to dehumanization.
Bureaucratization, automation, urbanization, and high social mobility lead people to relate to each other in anonymous, impersonal ways. Strangers can be more easily cast as unfeeling beings than can personal acquaintances. Of equal theoretical and social significance is the power of humanization to counteract injurious conduct. Studies examining this process reveal that, even under conditions that ordinarily weaken self-deterrents, it is difficult for people to behave cruelly toward people when they are characterized in ways that personalize and humanize them Victims get blamed for bringing suffering on them- selves, or extraordinary circumstances are invoked to vindicate irresponsible conduct.
People are socially aided in dehumanizing and blaming groups held in disfavor by perjorative stereotyping and indoctrination. These practices will not instantaneously transform a gentle person into a brutal aggressor. Rather, the change is usually achieved through a gradual desensitization process in which participants may not fully recognize the marked changes they are undergoing. Initially, individuals are prompted to perform aggressive acts they can tolerate without excessive self-censure.
After their discomfort and self-reproof are diminished through repeated performance, the level of aggression is progressively increased in this manner until eventually gruesome deeds, originally regarded as abhorrent, can be performed without much distress. Zimbardo 72 explains reduction of restraints over aggression in terms of deindividuation.
Deindividuation is an internal state characterized by a loss of self-consciousness and self-evaluation coupled with a diminished concern for negative evaluation from others.
According to this view, the altered perception of self and others weakens cognitive control over behavior, thus facilitating intense impulse actions. Although deindividuation and social learning theory posit some overlapping determinants and processes of internal disinihibition, they differ in certain important respects.
Deindividuation views intense aggression as resulting mainly from loss of cognitive control. Social learning encompasses a broader range of disinhibitory factors designed to provide a unified theory for explaining both impulsive and principled aggressive conduct.
As indicated earlier, people frequently engage in violent activities not because of reduced self-control but because their cognitive skills and self-control are enlisted all too well through moral justifications and self-expnerative devices in the service of destructive causes.
The massive threats to human welfare are generally brought about by deliberate acts of principle rather than by unrestrained acts of impulse. It is the principled resort to aggression that is of greatest social concern but most ignored in psychological theorizing and research. New York: Columbia University Press, Ax, A.
Azrin, N. Bandura, A. Principles of Behavior Modffication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Aggression: A Social Learning Analysts. Englewood Cliffs, N. Social Learning Theory. The open-ended questions help break the ice with your client or group and encourage lively discussion. Guided Imagery Books - Whole Person offers a wide variety of guided imagery and visualization scripts to help you teach the key stress management skill of relaxation.
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