Development of Aggression

Aggression is defined as the overt behavior of initiating hostilities or launching attacks. In psychology, aggression relates to many different types of behavior. Originally, aggressive behavior is defined as one person is intended to injure or irritate another people. However, it is difficult to know or to measure if a person's behavior is intentional, especially in children. Hence, when researchers carry out studies on aggression, the operational definition of aggression is often referred to the behavior that injures or irritates another person. Aggression behaviors are caused by many factors, such as social and environmental. People often associate aggression with the nature of human. There were two arguments on this nature; one defended that humans were fundamentally good (Rousseau, 1782) against children were originally wicked (Hobbes, 1651). In addition to these arguments, people are in favor of the view of blank slate by Aristotle. Blank slate states that human enter the world without having any built-in mental content; it is after the exposure of the environment of the outside world, they gain experiences and sensory perceptions which define their identity. Therefore, human are not born with aggression in the beginning and aggression is a learned behavior.
The frequency and duration of aggressive acts decline throughout early childhood. During childhood, aggression doesn't occur noticeably in children. However, children do present some traits of aggressive behavior. The most aggressive preschoolers tend to be the most aggressive school aged children. There is evidence to suggest that early aggressive behaviors in childhood can partly, although not fully, predict an increase aggression later in adolescence and early adulthood. This is the age trend in the development of aggression.
The purpose of this paper is to show how aggression is developed throughout lifespan and to explain the age trend in the development of aggression. The paper will be