Outline and Evaluate one or more Social Psychological Theories of Aggression (8 & 16 marks)

One Social Psychological Theory of Aggression is Deindividuation. This says that an individual changes when part of a crowd due to the combination of anonymity, suggestibility and contagion which makes the individual take on a ‘collective mind’ with the rest of the crowd. Because of this they lose all self-control and become capable of acting in a way which goes against social norms and their personality.

People usually refrain from acting in an aggressive way partly because there are social norms which stop this kind of behaviour and partly because they are identifiable as an individual. In a crowd they are anonymous which has the psychological consequences of increasing behaviours that are usually not allowed.

According to Zimbardo, being part of a crowd can take away awareness of our own individuality. In a large crowd every individual is faceless and therefore anonymous, the bigger the crowd the more anonymity you have. Because of this you have less fear of consequences for your actions and a reduced sense of guilt, shame and thought for others.

Mann (1981) conducted a study to support deindividuation as a theory of aggression by analysing US newspaper reports of 21 suicide jumps in the 1960’s and 1970’s. He found that in 10 of these cases a crowd had gathered and baited the jumper. This was more common when the suicide jump had occurred at night and baiting occurred more when the crowd was large and a long distance away.  This supports Deindividuation as a theory of aggression as people only baited the jumper when in a crowd, no one did it alone suggesting that it was the anonymity of the crowd that encouraged it.

This study however is lacking in temporal validity. As it was conducted in the 1960/70’s it cannot be generalized to people nowadays as society has changed a lot since then. Also as it was only carried out in the US the results only apply to society in the US and therefore cannot be generalized across the world making the study lack population validity and have a culture bias. The sample of suicide jumps looked at was a very small sample of only 21 cases and therefore the study lacks reliability as well as validity. This means that it may not support deindividuation as a cause for aggression as well as it first appears to and so other studies should be looked at as well as this one to get a better idea of whether or not deindividuation is a cause for aggression.   

Mann’s study can also be criticized by the fact he looked at newspaper articles of the suicide jumps which tend to be over exaggerated and could mean his study was based on untruthful evidence. Also as it was an observational study he could not control any extraneous variables that could have contributed to his results. His results showed a correlation between a crowd and baiting however as it was a correlation, a causation cannot be found from it meaning his results may not support deindividuation even though they seem to. Again this would mean that more studies need to be looked at to get a good idea of whether deindividuation is a cause of aggression.      

Another Social Psychological Theory of Aggression is the Social Learning Theory. Bandura and Walters (1963) believed that aggression could be learnt through the observation of others. Bandura did a study to support their theory by having one group of children observe adults being aggressive towards a Bobo Doll and one group of children observing the adults being non-aggressive towards the doll. The children then got to interact with the doll themselves and it was found that those who had observed the adults being aggressive towards the doll were a lot more likely to show aggression towards it themselves. This supports the Social Learning Theory as the children showed aggression towards the doll but had not reason to other than watching the adults do it before hand.

There is a big ethical issue with Banduras study as he exposed children to aggressive behaviour knowing that they may produce it in their own behaviour which goes against the British Code of Ethics’ code that researchers have to protect their participants from psychological harm.

It is also possible that there was a lot of demand characteristics in Banduras study and that a lot of the children knew what was expected of them during the study. One child was reported saying ‘there’s the doll we have to hit’ upon arriving to take part in the study. This reduces the internal validity of the study as it means that it was not the observation that caused the aggression in the children in some cases so measures should be taken into account to reduce demand characteristics or to compensate for this if the experiment is ever repeated.