A-Level Psychology (AQA)

Topic Summaries

Aggression

Social psychological explanations of aggression

  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis:
    • 👥 Dollard (1939) proposed that frustration is a psychological reaction that always leads to aggression which is a product of frustration.
    • 👥 Geen et al. (1977) studied male university students undertaking tasks under 3 conditions. In one condition, the participants were being insulted whilst administering shocks. He found that those who found the puzzle the hardest gave the weakest shocks, those who were insulted gave the strongest shocks, and the lowest levels of frustration being displaced onto the control group. This supports his hypothesis as he argued that frustration is displaced onto other people when it can’t be reduced.
    • 👥 Berkowitz (1973) didn’t agree with the cathartic view, instead believing that frustration prepared people for aggression and that there were specific environmental cues that triggered this reaction.
  • Social learning theory:
    • 👥 Bandura’s (1961) Bobo doll experiment postulated that learning is a social process that occurs through imitation of certain behaviours. It can occur directly or indirectly (vicarious reinforcement).
    • Vicarious reinforcement occurs when we see a role model being rewarded for a certain behaviour. The observer is likely to replicate this modelled behaviour as they want to get the same reward.
    • Role models are those who have desirable characteristics, are often the same sex and of higher social status.
  • De-individuation:
    • 👥 Le Bon (1895) proposed that deindividuation occurs as part of group behaviour where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour as the responsibility is shared within the group. We also aren’t scared of retaliation in this setting as we view ourselves as an anonymous face amongst a crowd.
    • 👥 Zimbardo (1969) theorised that when we are in a crowd, our behaviour starts to stray from social norms and becomes disinhibited. Laws and social norms no longer apply to our behaviour because we can’t be judged and are ‘anonymous’.
    • Consequences of anonymity allow us to develop private self-awareness or public self-awareness.
      • Private self-awareness: we become less aware of our own beliefs as the larger group is more important.
      • Public self-awareness: anonymity means we won’t face any judgement from others or punishment.

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