How can aggression be reduced

Just because someone is angry does not mean they will necessarily act on it and engage in aggressive behavior. If they do aggress, how intense is the behavior? To understand that, consider that aggressive acts occur along a continuum of least harmful to most harmful.

On the extreme side are violent acts or violence. They state that violence can be self-directed in the form of suicidal behavior or self-abuse, interpersonal and between family members or individuals who are unrelated, or collective in terms of social, political, and economic and suggest motives for violence. They add that violence acts can be physical, sexual, psychological, or involve deprivation or neglect.

For more on the report, and to view the report on violence prevention, please visit:. Aggression has three types. First, instrumental aggression occurs when a person attempts to obtain something but does not intend to harm others.

The behavior serves as a means to another end. An example would be if a toddler tries to take a toy from another toddler. Second, hostile or physical aggression occurs when a person intends to harm another person by hitting, shooting, kicking, punching, or stabbing them, or by simply threatening such action.

The behavior is an end in itself. Should a fourth type of aggression be listed — cyberbullying? Cyberbullying involves the use of technology such as social media, e-mail, chatrooms, texting, video games, Youtube, or photographs to humiliate, embarrass, intimidate, or even threaten someone to gain power and control over them. According to the National Bullying Prevention Center, cyberbullying involves an electronic form of contact, an aggressive act, intent, repetition, and harm to the target Hutson, and in the CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Unlike bullying done outside of the online environment, the target may not know who is actually bullying them or why, the cyberbullying could go viral and to a large audience, parents and adults may have difficulty managing it, and the harmful effects of cyberbullying on the target may not be easily seen by the bully, thereby perpetuating it.

Aggression towards others can take the form of crimes , or acts understood to be unacceptable within a society and which can result in punishment. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics BJS federal law enforcement agencies made a total of , arrests in Assaults increased from The overall rate of violent crime did not show any statistically significant change during the same period, though the trend was upward According to the U.

It ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even homicide. It can affect and involve employees, clients, customers and visitors. In there were workplace homicides and annually, nearly 23 million American workers report being victims of workplace violence. So, who is at risk? These behaviors are repeated multiple times or are highly likely to be repeated. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm.

They report most school violence occurs during transition times to include during lunch and before or after school and at the start of each semester. About half of all perpetrators gave some type of warning signal before the event. These findings underscore the importance of preventing violence at school as well as in communities. From to the number of deaths involving students, staff, or other individuals not directly affiliated with the school, went from 57 to 47 with a peak of 63 during the school year Source: CDC link above.

According to the BJS, in there were , victimizations theft and nonfatal violence at school and , away from school, or 29 and 24 per 1, students, at school and away from school, respectively. The victimization rate was higher for males and most schools during the school year reported developing a procedure for an active shooter incident.

According to womenshealth. The U. Rape also occurs if you are drunk, high, drugged, passed out, or asleep as in these situations you cannot give consent. It is a type of sexual assault and during their life, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men will be raped.

Of these, Sexual harassment occurs when unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or sexually charged words or gestures have been made. It includes unwanted pressure for sexual favors, pressure for dates, sexual comments, cat calls, sexual innuendos or stories, questions about sexual fantasies or fetishes, kissing sounds, howling, hugging, kissing, stroking, sexually suggestive signals, staring at someone, winking, etc.

Beginning with Section In Section 4. In this section we will address dispositional reasons why people aggress and in Section At times, a person or animal will respond in predictable ways to certain stimuli or as ethologists call it an instinct. Instincts are inborn and inherited such as with the phenomena of imprinting observed by Konrad Lorenz. He noted that young geese will follow the first moving object they sense after birth.

Though this is usually their mother, it may not be in all cases. Human beings do not possess this specific instinct. The instinct theory of motivation states that all of our activities, thoughts, and desires are biologically determined or evolutionarily programmed through our genes and this serve as our source of motivation.

William McDougall stated that humans are wired to attend to stimuli that are important to our goals, move toward the goal such as walking to the refrigerator, and finally we have the drive and energy between our perception of a goal and then movement towards it. On the other hand, Sigmund Freud believed motivation centered on instinctual impulses reaching consciousness and exerting pressure which, much like strain, is uncomfortable and leads to motivated behavior.

Freud identified two types of instincts — 1 life instincts or Eros including hunger, thirst, sex, self-preservation and the survival of the species, and all the creative forces that sustain life; and 2 death instincts or Thanatos which are destructive forces that can be directed inward as masochism or suicide or outward as hatred and aggression.

When these instincts create pressure, it is interpreted as pain and its satisfaction or reduction results in pleasure. Sexual and aggressive instincts tend to be repressed in the unconscious due to societal norms against their expression which could result in some type of punishment or anxiety.

Still, they need to be satisfied to reduce the pressure they exert and some ways Freud said this could be done was through humor containing aggressive or sexual themes or dreams. In the case of dreaming, the censorship relaxes during sleep but is not removed and so impulses do enter the content of dreams but are disguised.

Despite the disguise, we can still satisfy many of our urges i. Freud proposed that another way we can release aggression is through what he called displacement , or when we channel a feeling or thought to a substitute target because we cannot aggress against the primary target either due to social norms, laws, or it is not accessible to us. For instance, we all have been upset at our boss before. Instead of lashing out on them, we instead go home and engage in aggressive behavior to our significant other and possibly our children.

It could be that we are upset at not receiving our financial aid and so do not have the textbooks we need for the first week of class. We cannot lash out at our university or wherever the funds are supposed to come from, so we take out our frustration on our roommate.

Or maybe we are upset about social injustices perpetrated by our government. There is really no one specifically we can aggress against in this situation lack of access and so we aggress against those around us who are easy targets and available. Another perspective on instincts comes from American psychologist, William James who was influential on the Functionalist school of thought in Psychology. James agreed with this and suggested the existence of 37 instincts. These include parental love, jealousy, sociability, play, curiosity, fear, sympathy, vocalization, and imitation.

Interestingly, the founder of the school of thought called Behaviorism, John B. Watson , initially accepted the idea of instincts and proposed 11 of them associated with behavior. That said, in he came to reject this notion and instead argued that instincts are socially conditioned responses and in fact, the environment is the cause of all behavior. Finally, we are sometimes motivated by forces outside conscious awareness or what is called unconscious motivation.

It is here that repressed thoughts and instinctual impulses are kept. For information to pass from the unconscious to the preconscious it must pass a censor or gate keeper of sorts. Even when mental events are allowed through the gate, they may not be brought into awareness.

For that to occur, the eye of the conscious must become aware of them. Could it be then that we are frustrated with some situation or person and are not aware of it? Brain areas.

One area of the brain that has been implicated in aggression is the amygdala which is responsible for emotion. For instance, Matthies et al. The hypothalamus has also been indicated in aggressive behavior in mice Lin et al. With anger, we usually think we know what caused the problem. We have some target s for our anger.

It may be the person criticizing you, the person who cut you off on the freeway, an attacker, your boss, or even yourself. With anger, we may hope that a burst of energy aimed at the threat will defeat it.

Or we may hope that a burst of energy will break the barrier stopping us from meeting our goal. Anger can be used constructively at times. It can give us energy we need to fight back if physically attacked.

However, for most situations it merely clouds our judgement and creates extra stress. If anger prompts aggressive behavior toward other people, it can permanently harm relationships--especially with those we love. Prolonged or frequent resentment mild anger has been shown to be a significant cause of cardiovascular problems and heart attacks.

It is the villain behind "type A" behavior. What do the following examples of hostility have in common? Yelling at a cop for giving you a ticket. Kicking in a door that is broken. Blaming all your troubles on how your parents raised you. Refusing to accept that a relationship is over--when it clearly is. Throwing a temper tantrum after losing a game. Continuing to beat yourself up after you learned your lesson.

As destructive as anger can be at times, it is not nearly so bad as hostility. George Kelly believed that the underlying cause of all hostility is not adequately accepting unchangeable aspects of reality. Hostility means not accepting reality. Hostility is maintaining a goal even after it is clear it can't be reached. Hostility is doing something desperate to get things "right"--despite reality.

Hostility just hurts you and others. The only healthy response to a "done deed" reality is to accept it and try to understand it. Maslow's self-actualized people accepted life's hardships and people's shortcomings the way they accepted water as being wet. If you believe that you can choose to be happy and have learned the methods in this book, you know that you can be happy in the future--no matter what the reality is.

Therefore, accept the past, forgive, let go, and move on. Anger is caused by your inability to mentally cope with some situation. If you have a persistent problem with anger, then you either have important underlying issues that you have not yet resolved, or you are using emotional coping methods that are ineffective.

There are many internal and external methods for coping with anger. Many methods that help with any negative emotion also help with anger. Perceived loss of control for getting important values met causes anger. To get over your anger, it is helpful to identify those important values and to understand why you may lack confidence in your own ability to be happy. Blaming others or yourself and remaining angry may appear the easy way out.

Finding new ways to think about the situation and make yourself happy requires skillful effort. If you want to reduce your anger, consider each of the following issues or techniques for regaining mental control. Remember that anger stems from fear and a sense of helplessness. Some important value or goal is threatened and you feel that you are losing control of the situation. You may not want to admit feeling hurt or fear. You may think such an admission is a sign of weakness. Yet these are the underlying feelings that will help you identify which values and goals are being threatened.

The real threat may not be the surface issue being late to the movie as much as the underlying issue not being important to someone you love or being mistreated. Identifying emotions of fear and hurt will open the door to these underlying issues.

Once you get in touch with the fear and hurt, what images, thoughts, and underlying issues are associated with [cause] them? Self-exploration; chapter 2. My sexually abused client found that developing a deeper, empathetic understanding of her father and developing an unconditional caring for him as a person were keys to defusing her anger. If you choose to decrease your anger at someone, the first step is to make every effort to see the situation from their point-of-view.

You might begin by asking them to explain their point of view. Encourage them to talk about underlying assumptions, beliefs, or background factors that may have led them to the point- of-view or behavior you are upset about.

Summarize what they say and their emotions from their point of view so that they agree you understand their point of view. Understanding their situation, point of view, and the causes of their beliefs and behavior is usually the major hurdle to get control of anger. If it is impossible to have that kind of conversation with someone, then try to imagine an understanding scenario that allows you to defuse your anger.

From my experience of dealing with people with similar situations, I try to imagine what they might have been thinking and why. If you do not know the person well enough to know what their motives were, then what can you do? Recall the client who was so filled with anger after being raped by a masked man she would never see again. We looked at what we knew about human nature in general. Can you accept human nature as it really is? Can you accept that there are gang killings, child abuse, theft of my belongings, inconsiderate behavior, or other damaging events--without getting too upset about them?

Can you accept that some people will take advantage of me and "get away with it"? To be able to control our anger despite tragic events, we must each find a way to deal with the "dark side" of life. Issues of injustice, unfairness, and entitlements are discussed below Chapters 4, 8. To the degree that Mike believed his wife's underlying motives for being late were aimed at harming him, then his anger increases. If he dwells on thoughts like, "She doesn't care about me,""She's inconsiderate," "I wouldn't do that to her," or "She's so selfish," then they will add fuel to his anger.

Instead, he can interpret her underlying intentions as a legitimate need to take care of herself. People with hostile cognitive biases view the world as a hostile place. One of the earliest theories of aggression proposed that aggression is caused by frustration, which was defined as blocking goal-directed behavior Dollard et al. For example, if you are standing in a long line to purchase a ticket, it is frustrating when someone crowds in front of you.

This theory was later expanded to say that all unpleasant events, not just frustrations, cause aggression Berkowitz, Unpleasant events such as frustrations, provocations, social rejections, hot temperatures, loud noises, bad air e. Unpleasant events automatically trigger a fight—flight response.

Alcohol has long been associated with aggression and violence. In fact, sometimes alcohol is deliberately used to promote aggression. It has been standard practice for many centuries to issue soldiers some alcohol before they went into battle, both to increase aggression and reduce fear Keegan, There is ample evidence of a link between alcohol and aggression, including evidence from experimental studies showing that consuming alcohol can cause an increase in aggression e.

Most theories of intoxicated aggression fall into one of two categories: a pharmacological theories that focus on how alcohol disrupts cognitive processes, and b expectancy theories that focus on how social attitudes about alcohol facilitate aggression. Normally, people have strong inhibitions against behaving aggressively, and pharmacological models focus on how alcohol reduces these inhibitions. To use a car analogy, alcohol increases aggression by cutting the brake line rather than by stepping on the gas.

How does alcohol cut the brake line? Alcohol disrupts cognitive executive functions that help us organize, plan, achieve goals, and inhibit inappropriate behaviors Giancola, In some places where alcohol is consumed e. Alcohol also reduces self-awareness, which decreases attention to internal standards against behaving aggressively Hull, According to expectancy theories, alcohol increases aggression because people expect it to. In our brains, alcohol and aggression are strongly linked together.

Indeed, research shows that subliminally exposing people to alcohol-related words e. Does this research evidence mean that aggression is somehow contained in alcohol? Alcohol increases rather than causes aggressive tendencies. Factors that normally increase aggression e. In other words, alcohol mainly seems to increase aggression in combination with other factors. If someone insults or attacks you, your response will probably be more aggressive if you are drunk than sober.

When there is no provocation, however, the effect of alcohol on aggression may be negligible. Plenty of people enjoy an occasional drink without becoming aggressive.

Most people are greatly concerned about the amount of aggression in society. Aggression directly interferes with our basic needs of safety and security.

Thus, it is urgent to find ways to reduce aggression. Because there is no single cause for aggression, it is difficult to design effective treatments. A treatment that works for one individual may not work for another individual. And some extremely aggressive people, such as psychopaths, are considered to be untreatable. Indeed, many people have started to accept the fact that aggression and violence have become an inevitable, intrinsic part of our society.

This being said, there certainly are things that can be done to reduce aggression and violence. Before discussing some effective methods for reducing aggression, two ineffective methods need to be debunked: catharsis and punishment. If the too much aggressive behaviour of the child is discouraged through social learning and socialization process, the child will learn to reduce his hostile actions. If aggressive behaviour is mildly penalized it will be non reinforcive. When the child is involved in various hostile and violent activities he should be told by his parents, particularly the mother that she would not love him or take care of him if he is engaged in hostile activities.

The child who never wants to loose the love of his mother would definitely try to do so. This I have experimented with my grand son Anuraag.

Aggression can be reduced effectively in highly aggressive boys by allowing them to observe models who behave in a restrained and non-aggressive manner in the face of provocation.

This can be effectively done by the television and movie industries. Nonviolent movies and serials should be produced more and more and telecast in the television. It is said by social psychologists that if the aggressive behaviour of children go unchecked or unrestricted in the early formative years, they are more probable to be reinforced and continue in his adult life which is dangerous for the society and nation. By training the child to be, disciplined and develop positive values and morality a lot of aggressive behaviour can be controlled.

Parents and teachers have to play an active role in this regard. A disciplined and socialized individual with moral values will not try to show frequent violence which is harmful for the family and the society.

The life history of several convicts and criminals in jails has shown that those who have been jailed for their aggressive acts most of them were severely punished during childhood and punished repeatedly. That is why there is a saying that a woman who has been severely punished by his mother in law she also punishes her daughter in law severely when she becomes a mother in law. It is very often said that angry parents have angry children. So parents must try to control their frequent anger, irritation and hostility.

Children should be taught that there are other non aggressive or mildly aggressive reactions to frustration which can be used while reacting to a frustrating situation. Parents must try to be an ideal model for their children.