Direct, Displaced, and Cumulative Ethnic Aggression

Abstract

Introduction and Summary In May and again in September 1966, mobs of Northern Nigerians set about attacking Ibo residing in the North. These massive killings were important steps on the road to a powerful Ibo secessionist movement in Eastern Nigeria and nearly three years of civil war. While not all ethnic riots produce so extreme a denouement, many have important consequences for the political systems in which they occur. Yet there is no well-developed theory specifically addressed to the main issues of ethnic violence, its sources and patterns, although post facto explanations for individual riot episodes abound. This article assesses the utility of a major body of systematic thought-frustration-aggression theory-for the explanation of certain aspects of ethnic riot behavior. It combines insights derived from the experimental method in social psychology with material drawn from the comparative experience of ethnically divided societies. A principal area of inquiry in frustration-aggression theory has been the nexus between the origins and objects of aggression. This particular issue is also of considerable significance in the study of ethnic violence. For example, were the Ibo attacked because of some aspect of their own attributes and behavior, or were they victimized merely because they happened to be accessible objects on which to vent hostility that actually had quite different roots? The concept of a definite source or agent of frustration in the experimental psychological literature has given rise to a sharp distinction between direct and displaced aggression. If the source is attacked, the aggression is said to be direct, whereas if some other target is chosen, the aggression is said to be displaced onto that substitute target. While the theoretical distinction between direct and displaced aggression is valuable, in acual practice a great deal of ethnic aggression appears to be both direct and displaced. One group may become the sole target of aggression as a result of frustrations produced by it and others. From