Reductionist Approach To Aggression Essay

Aggression is defined by Anderson and Bushman (2002) as ‘behaviour directed towards another individual carried out with the proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm’. Whether physical or verbal, aggressive behaviour is frowned upon and being able to understand the causes and influences can help us inform how best to prevent or manage these behaviours. Reductionist approaches take a complex human behaviour such as aggression to be reducible by breaking it down into simpler components. There are different levels of explanation that aggression can be reduced to including biological causes such as hormone levels and genetic factors, behavioural explanations such as the social learning theory and social influences such as deindividuation. This essay will discuss these approaches and examine how beneficial reductionism is in understanding aggression. While each approach can offer insight into why humans can

For example deindividuation, a psychological state where a person in a crowd experiences a loss of self-awareness and awareness of others (Diener, 1979) can account for why people behave aggressively. This could be due to the fact being in a crowd makes you less identifiable and being anonymous diffuses responsibility and does not hold one accountable. Supporting evidence is offered by Zimbardo (1969) who found that when his student participants were in uniform and addressed as a group were more likely to deliver an electric shock to another student. Deindividuation is a possible explanation of aggression, however, this reductionist approach is limited as it does not explain why not all crowds exhibit aggressive behaviours. Research shows when deindividuated prosocial acts can occur when environmental cues are present (Johnson & Downing, 1979), moreover this cannot account for individual acts of aggressive behaviour when not in a