Human Aggression Essay

This essay concerns one of the most influential works on human behavior today. The title of this article is â€Å"Human Aggression. † This research was conducted by Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman who are both connected with the Department of Psychology at the Iowa State University. Their research was published in the Annual Review Psychology Journal 2002, vol. 53 pages 27 to 51. Introduction We have heard or witnessed accounts of people victimized by violence. Last September 2001, several hijackers took control of several planes and made them crash through the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Barely several minutes after, another plane hit the Pentagon. In these events hundreds of people died while thousands more were seriously injured. It is true that historically we are all aware that humans are capable of violent behavior. â€Å"Human violence is not new. † (Arthur G. Miller, Ch 8 p. 169) Thus, the act of one person killing another should not come as a surprise for us. Yet in the past years, human behavior is getting more violent. These past events have triggered the scientists and psychologists to once again examine the root cause of violence in human behavior. One of the recent studies was made by Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman. This essay seeks to understand the General Aggression Model which is a theoretical model proposed by Anderson and Bushman. The objective is to analyze this model in relation to the previous researches on aggressive human behavior and to determine the essential differences of this research to the previous studies. An overview of how this research was conducted will also be explained. The General Aggression Model Anderson and Bushman acknowledged the works of the previous researchers before them. These previous researches have all immensely contributed to our present understanding of how violence is brought about. Some of these researches concluded that the accessibility of guns, global warming, violence against children in schools and widespread exposure to violent entertainment media are all contributing factors to increasing violence. Several theories have also been proposed on human aggression. These are the Cognitive Neo-association Theory, Social Learning Theory, Script Theory, and the Excitation Transfer Theory. Anderson and Bushman believe, however, that these researches on human aggression need a theoretical model that will integrate all these works into a complete whole. (Gerald Amada, 2005, p. 2) They quote a statement made by Jules Henri Poincare, to wit: â€Å"Science is built up with fact, as a house is with stone. But a collection of fact is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. (Poincare) This theoretical model is known as the General Aggression Model. The General Aggression Model is primarily a theoretical model. There were no specific subjects used or laboratory experiments conducted. It simply incorporated the existing theories that have been published about human aggression. What makes it different from the other research on this topic is that it adds form and structure to the present theories about human aggression by unifying these mini-theories about aggressive behavior to form one complete model on Human Aggression. The General Aggression Model (GAM) examines the effect of certain variables interacting with the thoughts, mood and emotion and the arousal of an individual that may lead to the commission of violence. According to Anderson & Bushman, our thoughts, mood and emotion and our arousal not only interact with each other to determine whether a person will engage in aggressive behavior but they are influenced by two factors: a) the Situation Factors and b) the Person Factors. The Situation Factors pertain to the features of the particular situation that may increase or decrease the aggression. For example: insult, frustration, drugs, the presence of a gun, the presence of a religious leader or the presence of uncomfortable situation. This means that depending on the presence or absence of any of these variables there is a higher or lower probability that aggressive behavior will follow. The Person Factors pertain to the characteristics of a person that he brings to the particular situation. These Person Factors include: traits, beliefs, attitude, sex, values and long-term goals. This means that a person’s beliefs can serve as a powerful stimulus that may influence aggressive. For example, a person who has the tendency to feel that he has been unjustly treated by others is more likely to become suspicious of other people, and to harbor ill will against others. He is also more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. (Stephen Swartz, 2007, p. 2) Under the GAM, the Person Factors and the Situation Factors are only the first stage to the commission of human aggression. The second stage happens when there is an interaction between the Person Factors/Situation Factors with the three internal states: the cognition (hostile thoughts), affect (mood and emotion) and the arousal (physiological process). For example, when a child is exposed to a television show which exhibits violent scenes (Situation Factors) this has an effect on the cognitive in the sense that it gives access to the child’s hostile thoughts. Constant exposure therefore to these violent scenes means that access to hostile thoughts is increased making it more likely that the child will develop a script of his own and manifest aggressive behavior. (Thomas Brady, 2004 p. 3) The relationship between violent video games and human aggression is made clear using the GAM. This research warns us that adolescents’ exposure to video games increases the likelihood that he will behave aggressively. (Thomas A. Kooijmans, 2004, p. 1) Video games like Doom or mortal combat explicitly shows two characters attacking each other and trying to kill each other. (Situational Factor) This variable interacts with the Arousal or the physiological changes that are already happening to a child who is reaching puberty. The third stage is the appraisal and the decision making process. At this stage the individual evaluates and appraises all these variables that enter his brain. From then on he will either make a snap judgment (impulsive decision) or he may re-appraise the whole situation and come up with a more controlled and deliberate action. And then the last stage is the outcome. Evaluation of the General Aggression Model The GAM is unlike the previous theories of human behavior. It is more complex and at the same time it is more integrative. (â€Å"Psychology: An International Perspective†) It is more complex in the sense that it takes into account not only the character traits and the personality of the individual but it also includes his internal state such as his emotions and thoughts. It is more integrative because it successfully saw the connection among the past researches on human aggression and combined them under the GAM. The GAM is also more realistic compared to the other mini-theories on human aggression. Some of the other theories on human behavior even boldly claim that there is a direct relationship between some variables or factors such that the presence of these variables can help predict human behavior. On the other hand, the GAM only highlights how complex human behavior is. There are so many processes that must be taken into consideration before we could actually predict human behavior. As the Anderson and Bushman explained, the Situational Factors and the Person Factors are not the only variables to be considered in predicting future aggressive behavior. Any researcher must also take into account the person’s internal state such as his mental state, emotional state and the physical state. Before, I thought that engaging in aggressive behavior or performing an act that causes damage to another is always a conscious and deliberate product of the mind or the emotion. I thought that if a person commits violent behavior it is either because it is premeditated or it is because of heightened emotion. It is only now that I realized that the stimulus for aggression may also come from extrinsic factors that have no relation to the person engaging in aggressive behavior. For me, the most significant piece of information I found in this research paper is that certain Situational Factors such as the hot temperature or existing frustration may result to aggression. Conclusion The General Aggression Model is indeed one of the most comprehensive researches that deal with aggressive human behavior. As a theoretical model of human aggression, it is the first research to see the connection between the person’s characteristics, the particular situation he is in, his thoughts, his emotion and the physiological processes in his body. Though it provides a model for explaining how aggressive behavior is brought about, it admits that human behavior is unpredictable.