To What Extent Does Situational Causes Aggression? Theories and Evidence

Running Head: Health Psychology 0
Psychology in Everyday Life

Health Psychology 1
Q. What extent does situational causes aggression? Include theories and evidence from
research studies to support your argument
Human aggression is a very basic and extremely complex social behaviour. It depends
on different situation as if condition is unfavourable; some sort of guilt is there or due to
frustration or anxieties.Aggression is a flexible behaviour for several of our elderly ancestors
who reside in small society. Males utilized aggression to food, protection, access to females,
and other resources. Females used aggression to protect their prosperity and gain funds for
them. Children also deal with emotional as well as cognition effect.However; aggression is
much more complicated in terms of both biological and psychological processes. It is human
disaster unsurpassed in most extraordinary forms (Watson, Tay & Brien, 2004).
Situational Effects on Aggression:
 Immediate situations can encourage or prevent it.
 Frustration, excitement and the elements can affect it (Principato, 2018).
Situational factors-
 Aggressive Cues: Various aggressive cues have been found to interrelate with
provocation to increase behavioural reactions, as well as intervening factors such as
anger and availability of aggressive cognitions. Other factors that increase aggression,
for instance exposure to vicious TV, computer games, or movies, additionally seem to
do so by cognitive effect (Huesmann & Bushman, 2009).
 Provocation: Provocation is a situation or an activity that potentially instigates an
aggressive reaction from the casualty. It might be conceptualized either as violation,
in which the individual is physically assaulted, verbally offended, or threatened in
which the individual is prevented from accomplishing a goal. Verbal or physical
provocation is one of the major causes of aggression. In this, individual have a
tendency to respond with slightly higher level of aggression that they get from others
(Benjamin, 2016).
 Frustration: It can be defined by obstruction in goal attainment. Many provocations
can be viewed as a sort of frustration in which an individual has been recognized as
responsible for the inability to achieve the goal. It can provoke aggression when the
basis of frustration is unjustified or unlawful.

Health Psychology 2
Theories of Aggression-
Frustration-Aggression Theory:
This theory is developed from the effort of Dollard et al. It hypothesized that
frustration was a vital antecedent of aggression, and that aggression was an unavoidable
consequence of frustration. According to Miller and Berkowitz, whether or not delivers a
forceful reaction depends upon several elements such as potential for discipline of aggressive
behavioural reactions. It is a conceivable response to frustration, enhanced by aggressive
signs.
This actually encourages a number of distinctive tendencies such as a tendency to
escape or to discover a way around the obstacle to attainment of goal. A predisposition that
eventually dominates is one of the most successful theories in reducing frustration
(Golsharifi, 2015).
Extinction Transfer Theory:
According to Zillmann, this theory suggests that psychological excitement dissipates
gradually. This theory proposes that arousal from one situation can be transferred to another
situation. If two arousing events are isolated by a short measure of time, arousal from the first
event might be misattributed to the second event. It also suggests that anger might be
continued over a long time if an individual has deliberately attributed or uplifted arousal to
anger.
Theories of
Aggression
Extinction
Transfer
theory
Social
Learning
theory
Social
Interaction
theory
Frustation-
Aggression
theory