Aggression and Anger

Anger

People report experiencing anger from several times per week to several times per day. However, like many emotions, the definition one adopts depends on one’s theoretical perspective. Biological perspectives emphasize that anger may be a remnant of our ancestral past. Anger may have helped our ancestors obtain access to resources and mates and protect their offspring. By contrast, social constructivist theories of emotion suggest that the experience of anger is socioculturally determined. Appraisal theories of emotion suggest that anger arises in response to cognitive interpretations that people make in response to certain situations. Thinking that one has been unjustly harmed is a common anger-inducing appraisal. Other perspectives on anger suggest that anger can arise in the absence of any particular appraisal or social construction. Two eminent anger scholars recently emphasized the commonalities of the various theoretical perspectives by defining anger as “a syndrome of relatively specific feelings, cognitions, and physiological reactions linked associatively with an urge to injure some target” (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004, p. 108).

Aggression

There are many forms of aggression and overlap among the different forms, but aggression induced largely by anger is called hostile, reactive, impulsive, or affective aggression. This is in contrast to other subtypes of aggression such as instrumental aggression or defensive aggression. The definition of aggression is sometimes questioned, but scientists generally agree that aggression contains two key features. The first feature is that aggression is behavior enacted toward a target with the intent to harm the target. The second key feature is that the behavior enacted must be aversive and the target must be motivated to avoid the behavior (e.g., being insulted or slapped in the face). For example, shooting one’s hunting partner certainly meets the first criterion but would be considered an act of aggression only if the shooting were intentional. The terms violence and aggression are often used interchangeably, but many scientists define violence as extreme acts of physical aggression.

Examining the Effects of Violent Media on Anger and Aggression

Violent media researchers typically examine films, television, video games, comic books, and music. Most of these forms of media contain a high proportion of aggressive content and are popular among children and adults. Short-term effects are determined through experimental methods, usually within the confines of a research laboratory. In these experiments, some participants are randomly assigned to exposure to media with aggressive content and others are not. Anger and aggressive behavior are then measured. Long-term effects are typically examined by assessing exposure to violent media, anger, and aggression over time in the real world. Researchers can then determine to what extent exposure to violent media may influence anger and aggression at future time points. The best way to determine whether exposure to violent media influences anger or aggression is through [Page 23]meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a statistical synthesis of many experimental or nonexperimental studies on a topic that share a similar independent variable (e.g., media violence) and similar outcome variable (e.g., aggression). This procedure allows the researcher to estimate the size of the effect of media violence on anger and aggression.

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