THE ETHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF AGGRESSION

SPECIFICATION: The ethological explanation of aggression, including reference to innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns

The ethological explanation of aggression, including reference to innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns. Evolutionary explanations of human aggression.

Observations from ethology underline the significant role external stimuli play in managing aggressive behaviours.

Observations in the animal kingdom often reveal high restraint and self-control during conflicts. Instances of actual violence and injury are exceptional, not standard. This restraint is largely due to the prevalent use of threat displays and submissive gestures to resolve disputes without escalating to physical violence, a dynamic less commonly mirrored in human interactions.

In contrast, human aggression manifests through specific behaviours such as quick, overarm strikes aimed at an opponent's head, despite humans lacking anatomically specialised structures for inflicting severe physical harm.

Regarding defence and submission, humans typically adopt behaviours that minimize their physical presence and suggest vulnerability; they might slump their shoulders, grimace, spread their hands, and adopt a high-pitched, pleading tone of voice and actions. Morris (1977) categorises it as "bowing and scraping." Among animals, these submissive actions are highly effective deterrents against further aggression. A notable example is a wolf ceasing its attack when its rival exposes its throat in submission, signalling surrender.

However, the effectiveness of submissive behaviours in deterring human aggression appears diminished. Security footage often shows continued aggression towards individuals even after they have adopted a fetal position, suggesting that in humans, these gestures might not trigger the same instinctual response to cease attack as observed in the animal kingdom.

ANIMAL MODELS OF AGGRESSION

Several animal models have been used to study the effects of internal states which drugs, hormones and brain lesions can manipulate on aggressive behaviours.

• Muricide (mouse-killing) by cats (abandoned for ethical reasons)

• Shock-elicited fighting (abandoned for ethical reasons)

• Isolation-induced aggression

• Resident-intruder aggression

• Maternal aggression

• Brain-stimulation-induced aggression (hypothalamus)

• Dominance-related behaviours in primates

Discuss ethological research as part of the evolutionary explanation of human aggression.

In his influential book On Aggression, Lorenz (1966) stressed that humans are animals and, therefore, show similar behaviour to other animals. His ethological research could be generalised to humans as part of the evolutionary approach to explaining human aggression.

How: defeated animals find new environments

Or rituals allow animals to know their place in a hierarchy. Top dogs get the girls.

Lorenz proposed four main driving forces behind the behaviour of any animal: fear, hunger, reproduction and aggression. He said that aggression could only occur within a species and not between separate species and that the functions of aggression were to ensure sexual selection of the fittest and strongest, to ensure the survival of the young, and to distribute species evenly into territories. 

Perhaps most notably, Lorenz formulated the idea of ritualised aggression – showing aggression as an assertion of power and maintenance of status. He agreed with the earlier work of Craig (1921), who said that ritualised aggression usually meant the display of aggression but not actual violence.

Morris (1990) declared that animals exhibit a high level of restraint, and Gross (1988) proposed an “appeasement tactic” based on his research on the behaviour of jackdaws.

A03: A study of football hooliganism by Marsh et al. (1978)  supports ritualistic behaviour in males. Marsh and colleagues found that what might appear to be an undisciplined mob on match days can consist of several groups, each with status. By serving an apprenticeship of ritualised aggression over some time, young supporters can be ‘promoted’ into a higher group and can thus continue a ‘career’ of football violence. Marsh discovered that in most cases, this behaviour is highly ritualised rather than physically violent. For example, it is common after a match to chasing rival supporters, who are threatened with shouts of what aggressive actions will occur when they are caught, but on most occasions, the aggression remains verbal.

Here, however, Lorenz’s work meets criticism.

There is evidence from the animal kingdom that aggression is not always ritualistic; Goodall (2010) studied chimpanzee behaviour for over fifty years. As part of her research, she observed groups of chimpanzees that waged a brutal war against neighbouring groups of chimpanzees, slaughtering all members of the group. Goodall (2010) referred to this type of gang behaviour as the systematic slaughtering of one group by another stronger group. This aggression is hard to explain from an ethological standpoint as the risk of injury to the attacking group is high and thus does not appear to be an adaptive behaviour.

"The overwhelming impression one gets from watching animal disputes is of remarkable restraint and self-control. Blood spilling is not the norm - it is a rare event." 

This is because aggressive encounters involve threat and submissive/appeasement displays, which is not true of humans. 

Human attack behaviours - rapid, over arm blow at opponent heads; humans don't have specialised body parts to damage opponents. 

Human defence/submissive behaviours: People make their bodies appear small, limp, shoulders hunched, face winces, hands spread, voice high and whining, "bowing and scraping" (Morris, 1977). In animals, submissive behaviours are very effective in stopping attacks. For example, a wolf whose competitor rolls over and exposes his jugular vein will stop his attack. 

Submissive behaviours appear to be less effective in inhibiting human aggression, e.g. CCTV pictures of attacks continuing even when the victim is on the ground in the foetus position.

Counter A03: alcohol or drugs

If animal behaviour can be applied to humans, ritualised aggression should also be. But, as news stories and history will tell us, human aggression is often not at all ritualised and violent acts are committed for no good reason at all. There appears to be a major behavioural difference between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, and Lorenz’s ethological cannot give us a full picture of why this is.

A03: It has been argued that as we have evolved and our technology and weaponry likewise, we have become insensitive to the appeasement tactic. Weaponry these days means that attackers are often not close to their attacks, so appeasement tactics or distress signals are not registered. It is easier to distance oneself from the aggressive acts being carried out. This has been applied to modern-day terrorism by Tinbergen, who said that a terrorist who might be content to drop bombs on a target would be less content to stab or burn a person. physically

A03: Although the theoretical model of aggression has been abandoned, ethnologists have provided important insights into the role of external stimuli in controlling aggressive behaviours. 

A01 it

Innate releasing mechanisms

Fixed action patterns

Tinbergen (1951) undertook an experiment with male sticklebacks. This species of fish is very territorial and aggressive. In the mating season, they develop a red spot on their underside. Tinbergen observed that at this time, male sticklebacks will attack another male stickleback that enters their territory. He theorised that the red spot on their underside acted as an innate releasing mechanism. When one stickleback observed another stickleback with this red spot, they would initiate the aggressive attack behaviour, an example of a fixed action pattern. To test this out, he presented male sticklebacks with a wooden model; if the wooden model had a red spot, the male stickleback would attack. However, the male stickleback would not react without the red spot, and no aggression was displayed.

Criticism is more flexible; different triggers and responses may be because we need to be more adaptive/flexible.

An ethological explanation assumes that behaviour is innate and should, therefore, be uniform across all cultures. However, Nisbett (1996) found that in a laboratory experiment, when South American white males were insulted, they were more likely to respond aggressively than white North American males under the same conditions. This research demonstrates cultural differences that would be problematic for the ethological explanation, as there was a high variation in aggressive responses.

Not all fixed action patterns are fixed. Evidence shows that learning and environmental factors can create variation within a species. Therefore, discussing modal action patterns rather than fixed action patterns may be more appropriate. Modal action patterns are instinctual behaviours such as the desire to chase dogs (the prey drive), but that differ from one individual within the species compared to others. For example, some dogs may chase cats, but others do not. The differences in behaviour may be down to training or may be down to species differentiation as a result of selective breeding of characteristics.

Exam hint: An evaluation point would be to discuss whether animal research can be extrapolated to humans. However, it is important not to dismiss animal research entirely but just to advise that caution is required when making comparisons between animal and human behaviour

. Ethology, when applied to human behaviour, is a controversial area of psychology, accused of determinism and reductionism. Lorenz, in particular, has been criticised heavily for his research. In a scathing attack on his work, Barnet (1973) dismissed Lorenz’s research on aggression as outdated, saying it doesn’t “represent the methods or opinions current in ethology.” It has also been said to over-simplify the complex differences between humans and the animals he researched. The robustness of generalisations and the lack of scientific evidence to make such claims were questioned (Lehrman, 1953). 

Lorenz met opposition from Fromm (1973), who believed human aggression could be benign or malignant. In his application of animal behaviour to humans, Lorenz could offer no explanation for the malignant aggression that undeniably occurs across the world. His disregard for malignant, pointless acts of aggression is interesting for a person who was a signed-up member of the Nazi Party and whose work has been said to support Nazi ideas of “racial hygiene”.

Nelson (1974) believed there were basic factors behind aggression, different to Lorenz’s four: the process of learning, structural causes, and psychological causes. These factors go much deeper into the complex cognitive processes behind aggression than any of Lorenz’s work. 

The main problem with applying ethological research to the behaviour of humans is that there are such big differences between all animals. It seems a big leap to generalise the behaviour of jackdaws, for instance, onto humans because of such obvious dissimilarity. Tinbergen (1968) confirmed the dissimilarity of humans from any other animal, claiming that humans are the only species in which aggression is not part of an elaborate ritual system but instead a desire to harm one another.

Despite its many criticisms, Lorenz's ethological research remains a key part of the evolutionary explanation of human aggression and has had a considerable influence on popular thought.

Aggression" 

Aggression is a familiar term in common parlance and a key concept in studying human behaviour. In conversation, we may use the word "aggressive" to define a person assaulting another, a carnivorous animal seeking prey, or even a storm wreaking havoc on the earth it passes. The more narrow definition used in psychology is most appropriate for our purposes. Aggression is behaviour whose intent is to harm another. More specifically, aggression is defined as "any sequence of behaviour, the goal response to which is the injury of the person toward whom it is directed. You may notice that this definition, even on the surface, poses a conceptual challenge: How do we know the actor's intent?

While the definition of aggression varies somewhat from author to author, I find it helpful to look at theories of aggression by dividing them into three schools: those that consider aggression as an instinct, those that see it as a predictable reaction to defined stimuli, and those that consider it learned behaviour. The three schools form a continuum along which, at one end, aggression is seen as a consequence of purely innate factors and, at the other end, of external factors. Much of the debate on aggression might be framed as a more general "nature vs. nurture" debate.

Aggression-as-Instinct

Sigmund Freud is a prominent psychologist associated with the aggression-as-instinct school. He considered aggression a consequence of a more primary instinct he called...

Thanatos, an innate drive toward disintegration that Freud believed was directed against the self. If he was right, how is it that we all don't commit suicide? In part, it is because of a struggle between Thanatos and Eros [our innate drive toward life], which, luckily for us, Eros usually wins. But it is also because displacement redirects our self-destructive energies outward; we aggress against others to avoid aggressing against ourselves.

How, then, do people manage to avoid wreaking terrible violence upon one another? The answer, according to Freud, is catharsis: Watching violent events or engaging in mild displays of anger diminishes the aggressive urge and leaves us emotionally purified and calmed.

A great many people think of aggression as instinctual. This is the case even though the public has not read Freud on the subject and probably would not accept his notion of a death instinct, even if they were to become familiar with it. On a popular level, aggression is not seen so much as an outward displacement of an innate internally-directed destructive drive but rather as a universal externally directed drive, possibly connected to a survival instinct, which unites humankind with the animal world. Many go further in assuming that we can look to the non-human animal world to gain a clearer understanding of human aggression.

And that is what several scientists have done, particularly ethologists and socio-biologists. Chief among them is Konrad Lorenz, whose 1966 book On Aggression made a major impact. Its cover offers quotations that are suggestive of this impact. The New York Times heralded it as "one of the most important works of our age," expressing hope that it "be read not only by natural scientists but by Rand Corporation thinkers, members of the Pentagon, pacifists, and presidents...."

Lorenz defines aggression as "the fighting instinct in beast and man directed against members of the same species."[3] He relates it to Darwin's notion of the "struggle for existence": "The struggle Darwin was thinking of and which drives evolution forward is the competition between near relations. At least it does so under "natural -- or rather pre-cultural -- conditions... [because] it is always favourable for the species if the stronger of two rivals take possession of the territory or of the desired female.

Lorenz's study is based largely on his careful research of various animal species, particularly fish and birds and, to a lesser extent, non-primate mammals. In these varied species, he notes a shared instinct to defend territory from encroachment by an animal of the same species, to defeat a rival for a desired female and to protect the young and defenceless of the species. He finds that such aggression serves the animal kingdom well in that it brings about a "balanced distribution of animals of the same species over the available environment"[6], assures that the gene pool is continually modified toward strength, and enhances the likelihood of the young of a species growing to adulthood. In these three ways, aggression helps to preserve the species, regularly improving it to make it more adaptive to the environment. Beyond this, Lorenz attributes aggression to a role in developing the social structure due to its critical role in clarifying the rank ordering of the members of a group. Lorenz sees this as a necessity for developing an advanced social life. Lorenz also attributes to the aggressive drive a range of other functions under the general rubric of "motivation."

The presumption is that the primary functions of aggression accrued to humankind in its pre-cultural state. The problem is that cultural and technological advances have outstripped the inhibitory capacities of the human aggressive instinct. To illustrate this in an extreme form, two male mammals fighting over territory or a female do not fight to the death; the stronger backs off when, the weaker acknowledges his loss by exposing a vulnerable body part. Humankind, however, has produced and perfected lethal weapons delivered far from those being attacked. Sometimes, the attacked do not even know of the attack until the fatal blow has already been struck. Thus, they are unable to capitulate and stave off destruction. The babies in the daycare centre at the federal building in Oklahoma City could hardly have had the opportunity to display their defenselessness to the bomber. Our inhibitory mechanisms were presumably sufficient to allay intra-specific killing when our weapons were limited to our hands and feet. Still, they were not designed to offset the utilization of something even so low-tech as a handgun.

Aggression-as-instinct theorists tend to ascribe a cathartic effect to expressions of aggression. Empirical research, however, tends to cast doubt on this function:

Unfortunately, such predictions [of catharsis] turn out to be wrong. Couples who argue the most are those who are the most likely to become violent. Husbands who push their wives are those most likely to move on to slapping and punching. The best predictor of an individual's likelihood of criminal violence this year is his criminal violence last year. Violence seems to beget violence rather than decrease it