Aggressive Cues Research Articles

Broadcast Media Sensitization on Violence Against Women and Children in Port Harcourt

The study examined broadcast media sensitization on violence against women and children in Port Harcourt. The broadcast media have been sensitizing the members of audience on violence against women and children that happens in form of rape, domestic violence, among others. The social cognitive theory and aggressive cues media violence theory were adopted for the study. Three objectives which include to determine the frequency of broadcast media sensitization on violence against women and children in Port Harcourt and to examine the perception of residents of Port Harcourt towards broadcast media sensitization on violence against women and children and three research questions were adopted. Research methodology used was the survey design with the Taro Yamane formula used in deriving the sample size of 400 from the population size of 1,148,665. The convenience sampling technique was used and questionnaire was the instrument for data collection. Simple frequency distribution tables and percentages were used in the interpretation of data. Findings revealed that reports and programmes on violence against women and children in Port Harcourt are not broadcast regularly. Findings also revealed that residents of Port Harcourt find reports on violence against women and children to be scary, unreal and far. In conclusion, the broadcast media -radio and tv are great tools to influence sensitization because of their audio and audio-visual qualities. The study recommended that members of the audience will appreciate the adequacy of sensitization on violence against women and children when perpetrators are made to face the full weight of the law to serve as deterrent to others.

Eye tracking shows no substantive relationships between individual differences related to aggression and visual attention to unambiguously violent stimuli

Social-cognitive theories of aggression stipulate that aggressive people have an attentional bias for aggressive and ambiguously aggressive cues. This biased social information processing is thought to occur from very basic attentional processes (encoding) through to higher order interpretative processes (representation). The present research was a detailed investigation into the relationships between aggression-related personality dimensions in young adults and attention toward images depicting general violence, intimate partner violence, and non-violent images. Participants completed measures of trait aggression, intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization, alcohol use, psychopathy, empathy, and insecure adult attachment. In a dual-picture free-viewing eye tracker paradigm, participants viewed three trial types for 2000 ms: general violence versus neutral cues; intimate partner violence versus neutral cues; and intimate partner violence versus general violence. Experiment 1 (N = 127) showed a few of the predicted relationships between the traits and attention, but Experiment 2 (N = 127) failed to replicate these findings and there was no overlap in significant results between studies. These data provide very little support for attentional biases in a healthy population toward unambiguously violent stimuli as a function of aggression-related traits.

Romantic Attraction and Insensitivity to Aggressive Cues Among Honor-Oriented Women

Expectations for behavior that might influence early-stage attraction in romantic relationships are likely to be influenced by cultural values, such as those found in cultures of honor. Honor-based ideals emphasize reputation maintenance and create powerful expectations for the behaviors of men and women. This study sought to examine the role of masculine honor norms in how college women in the southern United States respond to behavioral cues presented by a man in an online dating simulation. Specifically, women who more strongly endorsed masculine honor norms demonstrated an insensitivity to aggressive behavior reported by a man who was a potential romantic partner compared to women who did not endorse these same honor norms. Results indicate that honor-oriented women reported strong romantic interest in a male even when he reveals aggressive actions in his online dating profile. However, women who do not strongly endorse masculine honor norms reported significantly less romantic interest in the aggressive male compared to an otherwise-equivalent non-aggressive male. These results suggest that the impact of honor values on relational patterns can begin as early as the initial attraction stage before any interaction occurs.

Preventing dog bites with L.O.V.E.

Children can be vulnerable to dog bites when they don't recognize aggressive cues, highlighting the importance of safe child-dog interactions. This article explains how anticipatory guidance with L.O.V.E. can be used to educate children and families about preventing dog bite injuries.

An Analysis of Aggression in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games

This article aims to analyse the aggression that is done by the tributes of the hunger games; they are Katniss, Peeta, Cato, Clove, Glimmer, and Thresh. The writer focuses on pointing out two topics, firstly the depiction of aggression in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, secondly the reason of aggression happened as depicted in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The method used in this article is the concept of aggression by several experts to depict the aggression that is done by the tributes in the hunger games and the psychological approach of death instinct by Sigmund Freud and also the concept of aggression by Anderson & Bushman to find out the situational factors on the action of the aggression. The majority of the factors behind the action of aggression is following by the death instinct for destruction and the aggression is also because of the situational factors, such as aggressive cues, provocation, frustration, pain and discomfort, incentives, and drugs.Keywords: Aggression; death instinct; situational factors.

Biogenic amines and activity levels alter the neural energetic response to aggressive social cues in the honey bee Apis mellifera.

Mitochondrial activity is highly dynamic in the healthy brain, and it can reflect both the signaling potential and the signaling history of neural circuits. Recent studies spanning invertebrates to mammals have highlighted a role for neural mitochondrial dynamics in learning and memory processes as well as behavior. In the current study, we investigate the interplay between biogenic amine signaling and neural energetics in the honey bee, Apis mellifera. In this species, aggressive behaviors are regulated by neural energetic state and biogenic amine titers, but it is unclear how these mechanisms are linked to impact behavioral expression. We show that brain mitochondrial number is highest in aggression-relevant brain regions and in individual bees that are most responsive to aggressive cues, emphasizing the importance of energetics in modulating this phenotype. We also show that the neural energetic response to alarm pheromone, an aggression inducing social cue, is activity dependent, modulated by the "fight or flight" insect neurotransmitter octopamine. Two other neuroactive compounds known to cause variation in aggression, dopamine, and serotonin, also modulate neural energetic state in aggression-relevant regions of the brain. However, the effects of these compounds on respiration at baseline and following alarm pheromone exposure are distinct, suggesting unique mechanisms underlying variation in mitochondrial respiration in these circuits. These results motivate new explanations for the ways in which biogenic amines alter sensory perception in the context of aggression. Considering neural energetics improves predictions about the regulation of complex and context-dependent behavioral phenotypes.

Sense of control and adolescents' aggression: The role of aggressive cues.

The misperception of aggressive cues is considered a risk factor for inducing adolescent aggression. Poor coping with life stress is also considered a major influence on aggression. The current study examined the relationship between subjective sense of control and adolescent aggression, considering influences upon the perception of these aggressive cues. In Study 1, 60 participants took part in a 2 (sense of control: high sense of control vs. low sense of control) × 2 (aggressive cue: aggressive vs. neutral) between-subjects contextual experiment. The result found that a lower sense of control led to an increase in adolescents' aggression; only in the low-sense-of-control condition did exposure to aggressive cues boost aggression. In Study 2, the catalytic effect of aggressive cues was further explored by an experiment in which 40 adolescents were randomly assigned to a low- or high-sense-of-control condition to test the importance of aggressive cues. The results suggest that adolescents in the low-sense-of-control condition show a higher salience for aggressive cues.

Issue Information

The December 2016 issue of PsyCh Journal presents six original articles highlighting recent psychological research from China, beginning with a voxel‐based morphometry study using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore the neural correlates of multitasking ability. Another MRI study adopted an imaging‐based quantitative approach to examine minor physical anomalies, such as smaller optical angles and medial‐ocular distance, that may serve as risk markers for schizophrenia‐spectrum disorders. This is followed by a validation of the Chinese version of the Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale (ACIPS), showing it to be a reliable measure for assessing individual differences in social pleasure, which can therefore serve as a screening tool for assessing social anhedonia. Next is a study of the developmental trajectory of time perspective, administering the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) to a large sample ranging from children to older adults, and suggesting that each time perspective dimension has a unique developmental pattern across the human lifespan. Next, an experimental study manipulated conflicts among frames of reference (FORs) used to represent and update spatial relationships of different objects, finding that participants were more sensitive to incongruencies among intrinsic FORs than egocentric ones, although these differing types of spatial representations competetively rely on a common processing mechanism. Concluding the issue is another experimental study examining the relationship between sense of control, aggressive cues, and adolescent aggression, finding that a lower sense of control led to both an increase in adolescents' aggression and a higher salience for aggressive cues. In addition, the issue includes at the close with the first of a regular series of reports on recent trends in Chinese psychology, presenting synopses of three articles that won the “Best Papers in Acta Psychologica Sinica of the Year” award for 2015. image

Show Me Your Hands! Police and Public Perceptions of Violent Interpersonal Cues

Psychology has recently begun to examine human interpersonal social predictors of violence. One area yet unexamined is potential differences between law enforcement officers and non-police in their perception of aggressive interpersonal social cues. Using a sample of 129 police officers and 178 non-police individuals, a direct comparison was made about perceptions of interpersonal social behaviors associated with imminent violence. It was revealed that both samples generally shared similar perceptions, with a few exceptions. Police officers were more sensitive than other individuals are to each of the behavioral cues. The police sample also perceived the behavior of placing one’s hands in one’s pockets as more threatening than did the non-police sample.

A Price Paid for Our Internal Strife: Escalated Intragroup Aggression and the Evolution of Ingroup Derogation.

From evolutionary reasoning, we derived a novel hypothesis that ingroup derogation is an adaptation to a special ecological condition in which the greater threat of aggression is incurred by ingroup members. This hypothesis was tested and supported across five studies. Specifically, the computational modeling found that ingroup derogation could easily evolve if the chance of death incurred by intragroup conflicts was no less than 10%. Further behavioral experiments on Chinese participants showed that the ingroup derogation mechanism responded to heuristic social category cues and it responded more strongly when participants subjectively felt more vulnerable to interpersonal aggression, or when there were contextual cues of aggression in the immediate environment. Additional results showed that Chinese participants responded more strongly to aggression cues originating from ingroup members and that they endorsed more ingroup derogation attitudes even when the ingroup and outgroup members were both displaying cues of aggression. In addition, the results also revealed that the Chinese participants perceived more intentions of aggression from ingroup members than from outgroup members even in the absence of any clear signs of those intentions, and such a bias was positively correlated with ingroup derogation attitudes. Taken together, these results suggest that ingroup derogation is related to the evolved response of intragroup aggression management system.

Are target-shooters more aggressive than the general population?

Although psychological research shows that guns are aggressive cues, proponents of liberal gun control argue that people rather than guns are to blame for gun-related violence. For instance, athletic target-shooters might classify guns as athletic rather than aggressive stimuli and thus should not be more aggressive than the general population. The present work investigated aggression and emotion-regulation in target-shooters. A longitudinal study found that initial self-reported aggression in target-shooters was higher than in the general population and further increased over 1 year. Additionally, the sample exhibited deficient emotion-regulation strategies, and this was related to self-reported aggression. In contrast, their implicit self-construct became more peaceful over time but was unrelated to all other measures. Two further cross-sectional experiments explored the causal impact of athletic target-shooting and other athletic activities (shooting a basketball) on aggression. Target-shooters and basketball players were tested before and after their regular team practice and aggressive thoughts and feelings were measured. Target-shooting but not basketball practice activated aggressive and anxiety-related thought more strongly than positive thought. Future research avenues, implications for the indirect measurement of aggression, and possible interventions to decrease aggression in target-shooters are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 43:3-13, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Situational predictors of violent intentions: Results from a factorial survey

Though many sociological and criminological theories of violence provide a role for both situational and individual-level factors, research largely focuses on individual-level characteristics. The current research, drawing on the psychological and sociological aggression literatures, utilizes a factorial survey approach to identify important situational risk factors. Multi-level regression results indicate that provocation, aggressive cues, and the presence of an audience are all statistically significant risk factors. Moreover, these factors maintain their importance even after statistically controlling for well-known individual-level characteristics. These results highlight the importance of situational factors and serve as a call for more situationally oriented research and theory on violence.

Aggressive situational cues among Israeli security personnel.

The present study enriches our knowledge on the relationship between security personnel and situational cues that may provoke aggression, such as arms and uniforms. The study examined 259 security personnel who completed an aggression questionnaire (AGQ). The study aimed (a) to compare the tendency toward aggression of security personnel who carry or do not carry arms and/or wear a uniform and (b) to compare the tendency toward aggression of men and women security personnel who carry or do not carry arms and/or wear a uniform. The findings indicated no main effect for aggression cueing classification. However, uniformed men had higher scores of physical aggression than women, and women scored significantly higher on anger than men when not carrying any aggressive cues. The findings also revealed that in general, men security personnel reported much higher physical aggression than women, while women showed slightly higher means of verbal aggression than men. The findings are discussed in light of the gender theory and research.

Polarizing Partisans and the Prejudiced with Violent Metaphors

When will partisans take more polarized policy positions apt for conflict, and when will they adopt conciliatory stances toward compromise? We argue that aggressive cues in everyday political speech signal approaching hostilities, and that partisans respond to these cues by aligning closer with partisan views before the clash or by seeking middle ground less tied to partisanship. These distinct responses to signs of conflict, we suggest, depend on each partisan’s orientation toward aggression in everyday life. In two survey experiments, we find considerable support for our predictions: exposure to violent metaphors increases partisan differences on policy views among aggressive citizens but reduces differences among low-aggression partisans. These findings reveal the hidden power of aggression in public opinion, they highlight the conditional nature of polarization dynamics, and they speak to the normative challenge that even mild language poses for political conflict among leaders and citizens.

Individual-level interventions for alcohol-related violence: Expanding targets for inclusion in treatment programs

PurposeAlcohol-related violence is a major public health problem, which can be tackled at a number of different levels, including societal, contextual, familial, social, and individual. The focus in this paper is on individual treatments to reduce the risk of violence associated with social drinking. MethodsThis is a narrative review of the processes by which alcohol increases the likelihood of violence, with an emphasis on its deleterious effects on social information processing. ResultsAlcohol priming promotes aggression cognitions and behavior; the drinking context presents triggers for violence; alcohol focuses attention on aggression cues; alcohol outcome expectancies predict drinking; anxious antisocial people who drink to increase social confidence may be at increased risk for aggression; hypermasculine values play a part in aggressive responding; emotional responses of anger, fear and excitement play a part in aggressive responses to perceived provocation; having a broad and accessible aggressive response repertoire, along with positive evaluations of aggressive responses predict aggressive behavior. ConclusionsAdditional intervention components that could improve the effectiveness of individual-level interventions for alcohol-related violence are suggested. These could augment conventional interventions, but there is a considerable amount of work to be done in developing applications specifically for alcohol-related violence and evaluating outcomes.

Games Online dan Katarsis Virtual

Interactivity, digitality, and virtuality are three important aspects of Internet technology, among others. Thanks to its break-through characteristics, internet brings many changes into the lives of people. Due to its accessible features and loads of information, many people’s needs on information, entertainment and social interaction are necessarily answered. One of the most interesting and widely developed features on internet is online game. Online game promises its users the ability to connect with other fellow users in real time. This paper intends to view online game as a second reality, different with the real world we live in. By employing psychoanalysis theory initiated and developed by Sigmund Freud, this paper sees online game as a playing field for human Id (Freudian biological desire), constantly repressed in real world due to its persisting conflict with ego and super ego. Online game commonly perceived as “unreal virtual sphere” facilitates its users to freely conduct certain actions which, in normal and real life, are forbidden, such as killing and raping. Therefore, online game could be perceived as catharsis, or outlet for bestial desire of human being. The hypotheses needs to be proven in this paper is whether sexual and violent character of online game really possess catharsis function to release the biological desire of the users, or, the other way around, namely, repressing the Id. The methodology used in this paper is case study with both observation as well as literature study relevant with online game in question. The authors attempt to observe directly and also conduct interview with ten children in five different internet shop (warnet). The theoretical paradigm used is twofold, namely, catharsis theory and Freudian psychoanalysis. To support the main paradigm used, the authors also use media dependency theory proposed by DeFleur, including, but not limited to, arousal and aggressive cues.
 Kata Kunci : Game online, katarsis, psikoanalisis

Games Online dan Katarsis Virtual (Studi Kasus dengan Analisis Psikoanalisis Freud pada Kecenderungan Permainan Game Interaktif Point Blank dan Second Life)

Interactivity, digitality, and virtuality are three important aspects of Internet technology, among others. Thanks to its break-through characteristics, internet brings many changes into the lives of people. Due to its accessible features and loads of information, many people’s needs on information, entertainment and social interaction are necessarily answered. One of the most interesting and widely developed features on internet is online game. Online game promises its users the ability to connect with other fellow users in real time. This paper intends to view online game as a second reality, different with the real world we live in. By employing psychoanalysis theory initiated and developed by Sigmund Freud, this paper sees online game as a playing field for human Id (Freudian biological desire), constantly repressed in real world due to its persisting conflict with ego and super ego. Online game commonly perceived as “unreal virtual sphere” facilitates its users to freely conduct certain actions which, in normal and real life, are forbidden, such as killing and raping. Therefore, online game could be perceived as catharsis, or outlet for bestial desire of human being. The hypotheses needs to be proven in this paper is whether sexual and violent character of online game really possess catharsis function to release the biological desire of the users, or, the other way around, namely, repressing the Id. The methodology used in this paper is case study with both observation as well as literature study relevant with online game in question. The authors attempt to observe directly and also conduct interview with ten children in five different internet shop (warnet). The theoretical paradigm used is twofold, namely, catharsis theory and Freudian psychoanalysis. To support the main paradigm used, the authors also use media dependency theory proposed by DeFleur, including, but not limited to, arousal and aggressive cues.
 Keywords : Game online, katarsis, psikoanalisis

Automatic Effects of Alcohol and Aggressive Cues on Aggressive Thoughts and Behaviors

Numerous studies have shown that alcohol increases aggression. In this article it is proposed that the link between alcohol and aggression is so strong that mere exposure to alcohol-related cues will automatically activate aggressive thoughts and behaviors. Two experiments tested this automaticity theory of alcohol-related aggression. In Experiment 1, participants exposed to alcohol- or weapon-related primes made faster lexical decisions about aggression-related words than did participants exposed to neutral primes. In Experiment 2, participants exposed to alcohol- or aggression-related subliminal primes were more aggressive toward the experimenter than were participants exposed to neutral subliminal primes. In both experiments, the effects of alcohol-related cues were as strong as the effect of aggression-related cues on aggressive thoughts and behaviors. People do not need to drink a drop of alcohol to become aggressive; exposure to alcohol cues is enough to automatically increase aggression.

The presence of aggression cues inverts the relation between digit ratio (2D:4D) and prosocial behaviour in a dictator game

Digit ratio (2D:4D) is a sexually dimorphic trait. Men have relatively shorter index (2D) compared to ring (4D) fingers than women. More masculine ratios are thought to be influenced by higher prenatal testosterone levels. In the present paper, we aim to show the context-dependency of the relation between 2D:4D and social behaviour. In two studies, we expose participants either to control or to aggression cues. Afterwards, they make a decision in a dictator game. Participants with low 2D:4D showed higher allocation levels (i.e. they were more prosocial) than participants with high 2D:4D in a neutral situation. However, this relationship inverts after exposure to an aggression cue. It turns out that in high 2D:4D people, aggression cues even increase prosocial behaviour. We call for future research which focuses on other plausible interactions between 2D:4D and context cues rather than on linear relations.

Hostile and Hardened? An Experimental Study on (De-)Sensitization to Violence and Suffering Through Playing Video Games

This study tests whether playing violent video games leads to desensitization and increased cardiovascular responding. In a laboratory experiment, 42 men spent 20 min playing either a high- or low-violence version of a “first-person shooter” game. Arousal (heart rate, respiration rate) was measured continuously. After playing the game, emotional responses to aversive and aggressive stimuli - pictures from Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert’s (1999) International Affective Picture System - were assessed with self-ratings and physiological measurement (skin conductance). Results showed no differences in the judgments of emotional responses to the stimuli. However, different effects of game violence emerged in the physiological reactions to the different types of stimulus material. Participants in the high-violence condition showed significantly weaker reactions (desensitization) to aversive stimuli and reacted significantly more strongly (sensitization) to aggressive cues. No support was found for the arousal hypothesis. Post-hoc analyses are used to discuss possible moderating influences of gaming experience and player’s trait aggressiveness in terms of the General Aggression Model ( Anderson & Bushman, 2001 ) and the Downward Spiral Model ( Slater, Henry, Swaim, & Anderson, 2003 ).