Causes of Agression

There are three main causes of aggression. The causes are social determinant, individual characteristics and situational factors or aversive events. Under social determinant, there have frustration, direct provocation, displaced aggression, exposure to media violence, heightened arousal and social learning theory: imitation and aggression. Individual characteristics include type A and type B, hostile attributional bias, narcissism and gender differences and part of situational factors are alcohol and heat or high temperature.

The first one under social determinant is frustration. Frustration-aggressive hypothesis suggest that frustration is a very powerful determinant of aggression. Frustration always leads to some form of aggression. This theory is not necessarily accurate in the basis because aggression is definitely not an automatic response to frustration. Sometimes, when someone gets frustration, it does mean that the person will be aggressive but he can react in different reactions like sadness and depression. In certain way, not all aggression stems from frustration. People aggress for many different reasons and in response to many different factors. For example, boxers hit their opponents not because of frustration but because of wish to win the competition. Frustration can serve as a powerful determinant of aggression under certain conditions especially when it is viewed as illegitimate and unjustified. For example, the worker who qualified to get promotion but then the supervisor who is bias gives the promotion to his nephew. As a result, the worker feels unjustified and seeks revenge against the supervisor.

Next is direct provocation. Physical or verbal provocation is one of the causes of aggression. People tend to reciprocate with the same or slightly higher level of aggression that they receive from others. Displaced aggression is one of part in social determinant. This means aggression against someone other than the source of