Psychological Theories Of Aggression Essay

Romeo Vitelli, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in Toronto, Canada, cites “A new research study published in the journal Psychology of Media Culture takes a comprehensive look at different risk factors of violence, including playing video games. Whitney de Camp of Western Michigan University used data taken from the 2008 Delaware School Survey to assess violence risk in 6567 Grade Eight children. Students were asked about violent and pre-violent behaviour, i.e., “hit someone with the intention of hurting them,” “take some kind of weapon to school or to a school event,” and “carry a gun when you’re not in school.” “According to the study results, playing violent video games didn 't appear to be related to any of the violent behaviours that the researchers examined. For both males and females, the two factors most successful in predicting risk of hitting someone in the previous year were seeing or hearing violence at home and being high in sensation-seeking.” “Overall, this research showed that the presumed danger of violent video game playing was largely exaggerated, at least in the eighth-graders looked at in this study. Other factors such as seeing or hearing violence at home, sensation seeking, and low parental monitoring or attachment were far more likely to predict violence in adolescents.” According to ProCon.org in the article, Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence?, the U.S. Surgeon General’s list of risk factors for youth violence include abusive parents, poverty, neglect, neighborhood crime, being male, substance abuse and mental health problems, but not video

Video games nowadays are all about violence, mature content, and suggestive themes. In “Is video game violence bad,” written by Christopher Ferguson, the author proposes there is no correlation between violent video games and

Margaret Mead was an anthropologist of her time, which was her reasoning for conducting a scientific study of the development of a variety of human beings and their societies and finding its connection to the development of warfare. As an anthropologist Margret Mead often studied her theory through observation of culture. Considering the two types of schism of the development of warfare, Margaret Mead is convinced that through the combination of both sociological inevitability and biological necessity, it is a reason that cultures use warfare. But in 1940, Margaret Mead argued in her essay, “ Warfare Is Only an Invention- Not a Biological Necessity,” that through research and case study she believes to have proven that war is not a biological necessity and is not “in our genes”, but clearly is an invention of mankind that had developed over time and is used today when someone is outraged our there is a sociological need for certain resources leading to the need of starting warfare. Warfare started out as an invention and developed through

In his article “Shooting in the Dark,” Benedict Carey argues that video games depict explicit or violent content stimulate aggressive behavior within gamers. He argues that video games like Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty, and Battlefield 3 increase aggressive urges and that exposure to these games leads to real-world hostilities. He mentions incidents like the young men who opened fire at Columbine High School and at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado—video gamers who seemed to be acting out some “dark digital fantasy”—to uphold his position. He believes a dose of violent video games can cause people to act “more rudely” than they would otherwise. Although he describes how violent video games may stimulate aggressive or hostile behavior, Carey’s argument can be challenged because there are other factors that can influence individuals to act violent and hostile. Moreover, it is indefinite whether violent video

Violent video games have been blamed for everything from bullying to school shootings. Critics of these video games believe they cause people to commit violent acts in real life. These critics, mainly comprised of parents and other responsible adults, don’t agree with what the video games portray. Others say the video games cause less violence and are an outlet for anger and stress. Although violent video games have violent actions in them, teenagers should be able to play violent video games because there isn’t enough evidence to prove they make teens more aggressive, it could prevent violence, and violent video games are a fun and relaxing way to relieve stress and anger.

In 1939, the world was plunged into World War II. This happened as a result of Germany remilitarizing the Rhineland, violating the Treaty of Versailles in the process, leaders in Europe assuming power through intimidation and creating laws depriving citizens of basic civil rights, German expansion into other areas of Europe, an attempt to appease Germany through the Munich Agreement, and political and economic instability in the major European countries. This conflict brought up appeasement and collective security, both of which were used before the war in an attempt to prevent it, as responses to aggression. Of the two, collective security is the most effective response to aggression because it has a great chance of ensuring the maintenance

Exactly how much of the human genome is similar to that of the great apes? How did the human species come to evolve so much further than their ancestors? Where did this violent behavior come from? Is the violence in human beings biological, cultural, or both? In Demonic Males, the authors Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham rely on field research executed in central Africa to help answer these questions regarding the violence in humans compared to the violence in apes. Agreeing with these authors argument, I too believe that violence in human beings is biological.

Our society is responsible for aggression. Many people argue that aggressive people were born with a predisposition to perform violent acts, but that does not settle with many psychologists’ studies. Other people believe that violent people were made from exposure to aggression during childhood. Both of these perspectives represent points of a larger argument started by Francis Galton 150 years ago most commonly known as “Nature versus Nurture”. After 150 years, and the founding of a new branch of science, epigenetics, scientists now have viable proof that that nurture is more influential in the case of aggression because epigenetics show that environments are responsible for gene expression.

There are several ideas that say young people benefit from these violent video games “Surprisingly, playing video games can help our physical, mental, and emotional health.” It helps them to improve hand eye coordination and thinking ability. These benefits are not worth the risk of being influenced by violent video games. (7)

As stated by Mannle & Hirschel (1988), the most frequently predatory Index offenses are the aggravated assault. Aggravated assault is different with criminal homicide, which that firearm is less likely to be used. Motives of aggravated assault are actually more to be random or unprovoked (Mannle & Hirschel, 1988).

Aggression is a spoken or physical behavior that causes intentional harm to a person. There are many different theories that argue what the cause of aggression is but this can be divided into two major types: people who think that aggression is inborn and those that view it as a learning behavior. The Social cognitive theory states that we learn behaviors through observation and modeling and this could be implied that we learn aggressive behaviors through observing and imitating others.

More and more kids are playing video and computer games — especially ultra-violent ones that are top sellers. Research shows that children are also spending increasing amounts of time playing them: an average of 13 hours per week for boys and five hours for girls. A recent content analysis by the research organization Children Now shows that a majority of video games include violence and about half of the violent incidents would result in serious injuries or death in the "real" world.

Most of the bad effects of video games because of their violence they contain. Thus children who play more violent and dangerous video games are more likely to have increased of aggressive thoughts, behavior, feelings and decreased in prosocial helping. The effect of violence video games in children is worsened by the games’ interactive nature. For the repeated cases of violence in video games, the child is in control of the violence and experiences in his own eye by killing, kicking, stabbing and shooting in games. Too much playing of violent video game will make the kid socially isolated. Some video games teach the children the wrong values. Violent behavior, revenge and aggression are rewarded. These games confuse the children between the reality and fantasy. Some of the major negative effects of playing video games are discussed below:

Does virtual violence lead to actual violence? As we all know at this age of sophisticated technology and information, children are more exposed to video gaming compared to the past decades. As a result, video gaming industry has gained tremendous growth since coming into the market in the 1980s. This is because of the increased number of its consumers, especially children and teenagers. Research shows that at least 83% of children in the US aged between 8-12 years are involved in video gaming once a month. This elevated number of video gaming has had its fair share of effects on its consumers. For instance, video games have positively influenced children to work together in completing various tasks, and often improve a child’s thinking capacity, especially through solving puzzles (Anderson et al, 2007). However, the contentious issue has been the effects of violent games on children, which are often negative to their well-being. In short, violent video games increase the aggressiveness of a child, and may eventually cause mental ill health.

As we know not all video games contain violent contents, but most of them are violent and mentally dangerous. Some researches admit that violent games may cause adolescents to become tremendous. Studies showed that video games increase psychological awakening, it could also increase aggressive behavior, emotions and thoughts and finally let teenagers lose the sense of helping others. All these effects will be carried by aggressive young people. It’s true that video games are violent, but aggressive adolescents are more likely to be more attracted to it. Some games reward players for doing violent actions, so this will affect them negatively, letting them think that violence is normal. A study on two groups showed that the group that plays violent ones, is more likely to think that using marijuana and drinking alcohol is normal and legal, also cheating in many ways would lead them to the right way too.