Discuss weather or not aggression is learnt with reference to research Essay

Discuss weather or not aggression is learnt with reference to research - Essay Example Additional elements of aggression include that the target of the aggression must feel intimidated by the aggressive action and feel that deliberate harm is intended by the person exhibiting aggressive behaviour (Anderson, 2002). The two key elements to note here are harm and intension. The perpetrator must intend to harm the victim. This can easily be understood by an example. If a boy comes snatches my younger brother’s pencil box, pushes him and starts running away, my brother would get furious. As a result if my brother chases the boy who ran with his pencil box, catches him and then slaps him that would be an example of aggressive behaviour. If on the other hand, my brother is playing soccer and unintentionally bumps into a player due to inertia that would not characterize as aggression. The reason is that the intention to harm was missing (Kinsella, 2004). Aggression and Violence: It is also important to establish the difference between aggression and violence. Where aggr ession means the intention to harm someone, violence refers to the intention of harming someone to an extreme level. Depending on the motive, aggression can further be divided into hostile or instrumental (Anderson, 2002). Different researchers and psychologists have done a lot of work on aggression and its causality. For the purpose of this paper, I will cite facts from a few of the works and answer the question as to whether aggression is learnt of innate. In the words of Sally Gadsdon, â€Å"If aggression is innate then all cultures should be equally aggressive, but this is obviously not the case.† I partially agree with this statement, since it is true that in our daily lives we meet hundreds of people belonging to the same culture, yet not equally aggressive. This does suggest something about aggression as an inherited trait. However tracking the roots of aggression is not as simple as it may seem. Is Aggression Learnt? From the point of view of the Social Learning Theor y, aggression is learnt from interactions with one’s social surroundings. It basically yields aggression as a product of the observation of a person’s environment; therefore it states that aggression is learnt. The Scripts Theory incorporates the element of the media into the social Learning Theory and states that aggression is learnt through the content which we observe on the mass media. The Social Interactions Theory further extends the concept of learned aggression to the idea of extrinsic motivation provided for aggressive acts, which breed aggression. For example, when new assassins join mafia gangs they are offered very generous monetary rewards which motivate them towards killing somebody. Therefore, in a way their aggression is motivated by the monetary value which they will get as a reward for their aggression (Anderson, 2002). All these theories build on the Frustration- Aggression hypothesis, which states that aggression is an outcome of frustration and fru stration is felt owing to our surroundings. Maslow did not approve the idea of simple frustration leading to aggressio