Outline and evaluate neural and hormona
Outline and evaluate neural and hormonal mechanisms in aggression.
There are two main biological explanations to aggression, neural and hormonal. The neural explanation is the serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitters and how they affect our aggression; the hormonal mechanisms are the testosterone and cortisol chemicals.
Testosterone is a hormone that is more concentrated in men than in women as it is a male sex hormone, it is thought to influence aggression from a young age onwards, due to its actions on the brain areas involved in controlling aggression. One research study that was done on testosterone involved measuring the testosterone found in the saliva of violent and non-violent criminals. This study was concluded by Dabbs et al and he found that those with highest testosterone levels had a history of primarily violent crimes, unlike those with the lowest levels who had committed non-violent crimes. This shows that testosterone had a link with aggression as there is a positive correlation with the results. However one criticism of this study is that it was only done on males, therefore it is gender bias, as well as lacking population validity as it was only done using a handful of criminals, on an A-typical population. A study that supports this was done by Lindman et al who found that young males who behaved aggressively when drunk had higher testosterone levels. Once again showing that men have a link between their testosterone levels and their aggression, however this is gender bias again so we can’t produce a conclusive result on how testosterone affects women as there are no studies to support it. This is supported by Eizengger who found that women with higher testosterone tend to become more determined and loving, unlike men. Therefore it could be that testosterone only links to aggression with men, and not women.
As a part of testosterone in aggression there is ‘the Challenge Hypothesis’, this is whether men produce more testosterone when confronted
There are two main biological explanations to aggression, neural and hormonal. The neural explanation is the serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitters and how they affect our aggression; the hormonal mechanisms are the testosterone and cortisol chemicals.
Testosterone is a hormone that is more concentrated in men than in women as it is a male sex hormone, it is thought to influence aggression from a young age onwards, due to its actions on the brain areas involved in controlling aggression. One research study that was done on testosterone involved measuring the testosterone found in the saliva of violent and non-violent criminals. This study was concluded by Dabbs et al and he found that those with highest testosterone levels had a history of primarily violent crimes, unlike those with the lowest levels who had committed non-violent crimes. This shows that testosterone had a link with aggression as there is a positive correlation with the results. However one criticism of this study is that it was only done on males, therefore it is gender bias, as well as lacking population validity as it was only done using a handful of criminals, on an A-typical population. A study that supports this was done by Lindman et al who found that young males who behaved aggressively when drunk had higher testosterone levels. Once again showing that men have a link between their testosterone levels and their aggression, however this is gender bias again so we can’t produce a conclusive result on how testosterone affects women as there are no studies to support it. This is supported by Eizengger who found that women with higher testosterone tend to become more determined and loving, unlike men. Therefore it could be that testosterone only links to aggression with men, and not women.
As a part of testosterone in aggression there is ‘the Challenge Hypothesis’, this is whether men produce more testosterone when confronted