Define the Concepts of Aggression and Violence

Aggression and violence appear in many different forms and in many different cultures and countries over the world, even in the animal kingdom, although this essay will only consider human aggression and violence. Aggression can be caused by intrapersonal factors, these occur within the person, their biology. It can also be caused by external factors, elements going on in the environment around the person. The difference between intrapersonal and external causes are similar to the nature nurture debate. This essay will first look at the definition of aggression and violence, and then proceed to look at intrapersonal and external causes of aggression, this essay will describe many causes of aggression, but there is more to the picture, for example the affects of gender and socialisation on aggression, which is not mentioned in this essay.

What is aggression? Aggression can be shown in many different ways, some of which are through physical aggression; shoving, kicking and punching another individual, some forms of aggression are psychological aggression, which can be broken into two parts, verbal (threatening speech or insults), and indirect (gossip) (Hogg & Vaughan, 2008; Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003, Bandura, 1973). Many psychologists have come up with definitions of aggression, one of which is Bandura (1973), he said aggression is behaviour that ends in destruction of property or personal injury. There is also many problems when deciding what would count as aggression, for example, when dentists repair a patients teeth (Bandura, 1973), or when harm is caused but it is in the victims best interests, like when disciplining a child, it may be hard to judge wherever or not this would count as aggression (Hogg & Vaughan, 2008).

Violence is closely related to aggression in that violence stems from aggression, but aggression doesn't always lead to violence, it sometimes leads to things like gossip, which would not be considered as violence. According to the dictionary, violence is the intent to cause injury or destruction by the use of physical force. Acts that could be considered violent can be as small as a child punching another child, to someone murdering or rapping another human being, violence can be very extreme or mild depending on the case. Violence may be learned from adults by children, as studies have found that if a child is exposed to violence he/she is more likely to have behavioural problems (Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003).

As was stated before, there are two different causes of aggression, intrapersonal and external. One aspect of the intrapersonal cause is the psychodynamic theory created by Freud (1930). He proposed that humans have an innate Thanatos, or death instinct and an opposing Eros or life instinct, aggression comes from the Thanatos. Everyday tension builds up from the Thanatos and is expressed as aggression as a form of release (Freud, 1930). These ideas were later revised by neo-Freudians who thought aggression was a release for the primitive instincts in a rational way, although still it was still considered innate (Hogg & Vaughan, 2008).

Personality can also play a big part in how aggressive a person is. Factors like low self esteem can contribute to aggression; it is caused by a threatened ego, as the person will want to have a favourable view of themselves and by making someone else look bad it's reinforcing the favourable view they hold (Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003). There are different types of personality, one of these types is called type A behaviour pattern. This has been connected with coronary heart disease and other characteristics of the behaviour pattern are; being very driven, competitive, hostile and having a strong sense of time urgency. This contributes to being aggressive as people with this personality see themselves in competition with others and they also prefer to work alone when under stress so they can be in control (Hogg & Vaughan, 2008).

Support for type A personality being a cause of aggression comes from a study by Book, Starzyk & Quinsey (2002)(as cited in Hogg & Vaughan, 2008), they found that aggression (in the form of giving shocks) was higher when the participant was type A. Also a correlation for the sex hormone testosterone was found, 0.14 between testosterone levels and aggression, which proves, along with many other studies that that higher testosterone levels are connected with aggression (Hogg & Vaughan, 2008).

Aggression also has a neural base, this can be shown by inserting electrodes into the amygdala of the brain. This leads to subjects reporting feelings of anger, although they can be overcome. If a person has a tumour in this area they can become more aggressive, this could