Aggression/Keywords/Definitions

  • Active aggression is harming others by performing a behaviour.
  • Aggression is any behaviour intended to harm another person who is motivated to avoid the harm.
  • Antisocial behaviour is behaviour that either damages interpersonal relationships or is culturally undesirable.
  • Cultural of honour is a society that places high value on individual respect, strength and virtue, and accepts and justifies violent action in repose to threats to one’s honor.
  • Deindividuation is a sense of anonymity and loss of individuality, as in a large group, making people especially likely to engage in antisocial behaviours.
  • Descriptive norms are norms that specify what most people do.
  • Displaced aggression (kicking the dog effect) is attacking a different or innocent target rather than the original source of anger.
  • Fight or flight syndrome is a response to stress that involves aggressing against others or running away.
  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis is the proposal that “the occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration,” and “the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression”.
  • Hostile aggression is “hot”, impulsive, angry behaviour that is motivated by a desire to harm someone.
  • Hostile attribution bias is the tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as aggressive.
  • Hostile perception bias is the tendency to perceive social interactions in general as being aggressive.
  • Hostile expectation bias is the tendency to assume that people will react to potential conflicts with aggression.
  • Humiliation is a state of disgrace or loss of self-respect (or of respect from others).
  • Injunction norms are norms that specify what most other approve or disapprove of.
  • Instrumental aggression is “cold” premeditated, calculated harmful behaviour that is a means to some practical or material end.
  • Magnitude gap is the difference in outcomes between the perpetrator and the victim – the victim loses more than the perpetrator gains.
  • Modeling is observing and copying or imitating the behaviour of others.
  • Norms are social standards that prescribe what people ought to do.
  • Passive aggression is harming others by withholding a behaviour.
  • Relational aggression is intentionally harming someone’s relationships with others.
  • Running amok is the behaviour of a young man who becomes “uncontrollably” violence after receiving a blow to his ego.
  • Tend and befriend syndrome is a response to stress that involves nurturing others and making friends.
  • Triggered displaced aggression is a form of displaced aggression in which the (second) target has committed a minor offence.
  • Weapons effect is the increase in aggression that occurs as a result of the mere presence of a weapon.

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