Poverty and Aggression

This study will examine aggressive behavior of people at various incomes and levels of wealth.

Hypothesis: People living in poverty will have troubles fulfilling their needs(affording groceries, paying bills, etc.). This will cause individuals to have high levels of stress and frustration, thus resulting in higher levels of aggression.

Literature Review:
Cunradi, C., Caetano, R., Clark, C., Schafer, J. (2000). Neighborhood Poverty as a Predictor of Intimate Partner Violence Among White, Black, and Hispanic Couples in the United States: A Multilevel Analysis. Annals of Epidemiology, Volume 10, Issue 5, July 2000, Pages 297-308

Santiago, C., Wadsworth, M., Stump, J. (2009). Socioeconomic status, neighborhood disadvantage, and poverty-related stress: Prospective effects on psychological syndromes among diverse low-income families. Journal of Economic Psychology

Method: To test this hypothesis I will create a survey. The survey will include questions about the individuals income, number of dependents, and current financial status. The survey will be given to at least ten participants from various income levels. Along with the survey the participants will be asked to do self reports on their own aggressive behaviors.

Alcohol, Age, & Aggression

Introduction: People drinking alcohol are more prone to aggression. My hypothesis is that age and gender are also a factor in how weak people become when faced with a frustrating situation. My hypothesis will prove that younger males who have been drinking alcohol are the most aggressive as compared to older males or any age of females.

Literature Review
Wells, S. (2006). Differences in predictors of alcohol-related aggression and non-alcohol-related violent perpetration: An exploratory analysis in a sample of young adult drinkers. Contemporary Drug Problems, 33(4), 563-583.

Tremblay, P., Mihic, L., Graham, K., & Jelley, J. (2007). Role of motivation to respond to provocation, the social environment, and trait aggression in alcohol-related aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 33(5), 389-411. doi:10.1002/ab.20193.

Method: I will prove this hypothesis to be true by surveying people attending a concert to be held in Butte. All age groups will be in attendance. Alcohol will be served. At the concert I will watch for a naturally occurring aggressive incident to occur. Following the incident I will survey a variety of ages and genders of people that were involved in this incident. I will ask 10+ willing participants questions including age, if they were drinking, and if they have been in a physical or verbal altercation due to drinking within the past year. If they partake in aggressive behavior I will ask if that made them feel better. If any other pertinent information is disclosed while surveying participants I will note that information as well. This should yield results that confirm younger men will have the most aggressive answers with a background of previous aggression related to alcohol consumption.

Verbal Aggression in Video Games

Introduction
Aggression- Hostile behavior with a purpose to intimidate, verbally abuse or threaten.

Hypothesis- Those who frequently portray themselves as violent characters in video games may lose their sensitivity towards violence and may automatically find themselves acting more aggressive in game settings than they do in reality. In violent games such as Grand Theft Auto and Blood Rayne a gamer puts him or herself in the place of an aggressive character. This makes the player sympathize with aggressors and through the visuals of gaming; they become numbed to the violence and aggression in their interactions throughout the game. As Karen Dill said, “Even a brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants.” Therefore, in-game messaging in violent games may be more verbally aggressive than in non-aggressive games.
Literature Review
1. Willenz, Pam. "Violent Video Games Can Increase Aggression." APA Online. 04/23/2000. Web. 2 Dec 2009. .

2. Anderson, Craig, and Karen Dill. "Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in." 78.4 (2000): 772-791. Web. 2 Dec 2009. http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp784772.pdf.
Method
To test this hypothesis I will take in-game messaging from a violent game and a non-violent game over a period of several hours. I will see if the interactions between players are aggressive based on what they write to one another. I will remain neutral without contributing to the in-game chat. The number of aggressive comments per game will be counted based on the above definition of aggression. I think it is pretty likely that the violent video games will contain much more outward verbal aggression because of the atmosphere that violent games create.

Children Aggression

Introduction

Anyone who grew up with siblings knows lots of aggression can occur in childhood. I have an older brother and younger sister, so being right in the middle I feel I know exactly what aggression is. From my experiences I believe there is more agression between male and female children rather than between two females or two males. It also seems ligitiment that the way a parent punishes a child could cause more aggression. If the parent shows any aggression towards the child during the punishment, the child will likely follow in their footsteps.

Literature Review

Martin, J., & Ross, H. (2005). International journal of behaivoral development. Sibling

aggression: Sex differences and parents'reactions. 29(2), 129-138. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=12&hid=104&sid=ac6a5031-6c96-4dae-8e13-



In this study boys and girls, ages two and a half and four and a half engaged in aggression. This study shows how parents reacted towards this aggression by punishing the boys more than girls, and feeling that the younger children were less guilty. This study also shows the older the boys get the more aggressive they are towards each other.

Takahashi, F., Koseki, S., Shimada, H. (2009). Developmental trends in children's aggression

and social problem-solving. Journal of applied developmental psychology, 30(3), 265-272.

Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=105&sid=4f62b28c-

0ad8-4f88-8d8d-5981b9a1fd34%40sessionmgr113&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%

3d%3d#db=aph&AN=37812324

This article gives a good explanation of how a child taught problem solving techniques will not be as aggressive as one who is not. This adds to the point in my hypothesis that a childs aggression depends a lot on parents behaivor. A child who's parent walks through a problem to find a solution will be less aggresive than one whose parent yells to solve everything.

Method

To play out this experiment I plan on sitting in the toy section of Walmart and just observing what I see. I hope to find children fighting over toys, and parents trying to stop the fight. I also am going to look for the children that are nagging their parents to buy them that toy they just can't live without. I will observe how fast the adult replies to the child, how aggressively they tell the child yes or no, and how the adult treats the screaming and crying child that was told no. After I observe the children and adults, I will put all my information together and look for patterns in aggression. I will look at children ages 3-14 with and without adults watching over them.

Quiz 9: Have The Signs of Aggression in People Increased, Decreased, or Stayed the Same in the Past Decade?

Introduction: The signs of aggression in people has increased over the past decade from 1999 to 2009. I think that this is so, because I have noticed about how much violence has gone up in movies and video games this past decade. This can be factor in someone to have aggression or even have increased aggression. I also feel that we are in times where some people have lost respect for others like people talking behind other people's backs which might show indirect aggression. I have noticed this based on me knowing people that have had these experiences even in the past ten years.

Literature Review:

Anderson, Craig A. (2003 October). "Violent Video Games: Myths, Facts, and Unanswered Questions." <http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html>.


Shin, Grace. (2008 January 4). "Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression." <http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1723>.

I picked these two articles, because these deal with a factor that could possibly lead people to have aggression which is violent video games. Even the authors agree with me that violence in video games can be a cause in someone to have aggression. This is especially with how violence has heightened up in video games during the past decade leading even more people of different age groups to have some sort of aggression.

Method: How I want to go about proving this is that I am going to put together a survey. This survey will ask questions such as how much has video game violence as well as violence on television and in movies changed in the last ten years and how much has the signs of aggression in people changed in the past decade. The questions will have to do with the different possible causes of aggression and the different effects that could occur based on someone having aggression. I will have ten questions on this survey and I'll have the answers be a scale of numbers from one to five. One will be that it decreased a lot, two will be that it decreased a little, three will be that it stayed the same, four will be that it increased a little, and five will be that it increased a lot. I'll hand this survey out to ten random people and I'll make sure that they will get it back to me. Once I get all of the surveys back, I will evaluate all of the people's answers to the questions to see if how similiar their answers would be to mine. This will help me to see whether my hypothesis is right or not.

Limited Resources as a Source of Human Aggression

Introduction:

Those that experience a shortage of resources will be more prone to be more aggressive to acquire those resources. According to Eibl-Eibesfeldt, “by war, groups acquired access to resources which were blocked by other groups. Groups of people have acquired land and driven away or even exterminated those who lived there before (1977).” It should come to no one’s surprise that wars have been started due to limited resources. However, my intention of this experiment will mostly be verbal anger. According to Archer, “most considerations of animal aggression concentrate on the forms that occur in response to resource competition (2009).” This should also be true of humans and I will demonstrate that in my experiment about deliberately taking away resources.

Literature Review:

Archer, J. (2009). The nature of aggression. International

Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 32(4), 202-208.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1977). Evolution of destructive aggression.

Aggressive Behavior, 3(2), 127-144.

Methods:

I know about a football house party that I will be going to on Sunday and I am in charge of food. The item will be pizza. I will create a shortage by merely stating I’m going to order the pizza, and have my buddy who works at one of the restaurant chains in town only deliver just one medium sized pizza instead of four large pizzas. Over the next half hour, I will try to gauge people’s reactions to the limited amount of pizza available. I will get another buddy in on the act, and he will purposely eat a large amount of that one pizza. I hope that there is some sort of rift between people that want to share a small amount to satisfy their appetite for the short term, or if members will try to go every person for themselves and satisfy their own appetite. My role is to pretend to fix the order over the phone while observing what people say to each other. I think there will be some verbal hostility between people at the party. I hope to keep it relatively short and end any possible hostilities by receiving the rest of the pizza about half an hour later. I will then ask afterward, one on one, to about ten to twelve people what they thought of the one pizza and the people around them.

Passive Aggressive Behavior in the Workplace

(blog 2)

We all know what aggression is. But what is passive aggression? According to Signe Whitson, it is "a deliberate and masked way of expressing hidden anger." Whitson wrote an article for Psychology Today called "Passive Aggressive Behavior in the Workplace: Exposing Office Crime"

According to the article, an employee may use passive aggressive actions in order to voice his opinions, sabotage group projects or other employees, or to get revenge. Some examples of passive aggressive behaviors in the workplace include:
- Writing aggressive notes or emails rather than confronting someone personally or trying to solve the problem.
-Failing to complete an assignment properly or performing low-quality or incomplete work and then blaming others. One might say that he wasn't given proper instructions or tools.
-Calling in sick when he is part of an important group project, therefore sabotaging the other members of the group and the entire project.
-Getting back at someone that he has a grudge against by going behind their back. Rather than confronting the person who he's mad at, one might spread false rumors to try to get the other fired.

Just as we have defined aggression in class, passive aggressiveness is always deliberate. Passive aggressiveness is different in that the person is more discreet about his actions. He might try to be anonymous (write an anonymous note) or pretend that he didn't know any better or did something on accident. People often use passive aggressiveness more in the workplace because they think that they won't get in as much trouble as they would if they used traditional aggression.

Here is a YouTube video about passive aggressive emailing in the workplace.


Passive aggression seems to be quite common in the workplace. It is a way that people "deal" with problems without actually solving the problem or confronting someone that they are angry with. I have seen it in a lot of my own jobs, especially with the notes and emails. Another example that I have seen is a manager who, rather than telling an employee that he has been doing poorly at their job, will just cut their hours without notice.

Here is a website that I thought of while researching this topic. It's a blog that shows real passive aggressive notes that people have written. Other people take pictures of them and send them to the website. It sometimes has offensive language, so read at your discretion: http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

What types of passive aggression behaviors have you noticed at your own jobs?