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Displaced
Aggression Chapter 12 of
Moghaddam's Great Ideas in Psychology For audio version (12 minutes), click here. Moghaddam's
discussion of displaced aggression is very clear, so I will not add much;
however, the comments I do have I will add here rather than in the lecture
hour so that we have sufficient time for discussion of the Cosgrove and Flynn
study. While there
are many other viewpoints, Moghaddam emphasizes the Freudian basis of the
displaced aggression concept. Recall that Freud posited aggression as
instinctual; that is, he viewed it as built-in to humans. Freud said that
some repression (though not total repression) of this instinctual aggression
(and of instinctual sexuality) is necessary for the survival of society. In
Chapter 4, Moghaddam described repression as a defense mechanism, that is, as
a protection against the anxiety associated with unconscious conflicts
involving aggression and sexuality. In the current chapter, Moghaddam
presents displaced aggression as an example of another defense mechanism and
introduces a few others - projection and rationalization. I also mentioned a
few defense mechanisms in my lecture on January
15, and a complete list with descriptions can be found by entering "defense
mechanisms"
in the on-line Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (always available on the left
sidebar of the website). Moghaddam
also introduces the Freudian concepts of "libido" and
"transference." Freud used libido as the general name for the
emotional energy associated with instinctual love in all its forms. However,
Freud believed that relations are never fully loving - always also involving
hostile instincts - and that in order to meet society's demands and avoid anxiety,
humans employ defense mechanisms to repress the negative aspect. The
general meaning of transference is displacement of an emotion or attitude
away from its obvious natural object and towards someone else. The most
common use of this concept involves relationships in the psychotherapy
context - Freud suggested that clients often come to experience the same
conflicts and respond emotionally towards their therapists in the same ways
that they do with respect to significant others in their lives. Therapists
believe this transference is very valuable because an accomplished therapist
can work with a client to recognize and change these emotional responses as
they appear in therapy, thereby assisting the client to understand them and
generalize the changes to daily life. Moghaddam
chooses to place his emphasis on the intergroup rather than the interpersonal
aspects of displaced aggression. He introduces the important distinction of
in-groups and out-groups, and he takes a brief detour to describe two ways in
which in-groups are likely to form and cohere. One idea is that groups form
as a result of each individual's attraction to similar others, but it is
important to attend to Moghaddam's point that the dimensions along which
individuals assess similarity is determined by culture - dimensions that are
important in one culture may be totally irrelevant in another (consider the
relative importance of the Catholic/Protestant distinction in Belfast and in
Toronto, for example). He also emphasizes that groups may form under
conditions of mutual threat, and that even competing groups may come together
by way of the perception that they share a common threat (consider his
example of diverse American groups in the immediate aftermath of 9/11). The research
of Muzafer Sherif is mentioned as important in the study of intergroup
relations, but Moghaddam doesn't describe this work. Perhaps the best-known
Sherif study is the Robbers Cave Experiment in which two groups of
12-year-old boys were manipulated in a summer camp setting to compete
aggressively with each other and then to resolve their differences through
seeking solutions to shared threatening problems. You can read a description
of the study by following this Robbers
Cave link
or by consulting Sherif's own report available from York's Psychclassics website. Moghaddam
also mentions Dollard and Miller's frustration-aggression hypothesis in his
chapter. Dollard and Miller attempted to formalize many Freudian concepts in
more behaviourist learning terms, that is, in a manner that would make them
testable. The strongest form of their hypothesis was that aggression is
always the result of blocked goals that lead to frustration and then to
aggression. A great deal of research was done on this idea, and, as Moghaddam
summarizes, researchers quickly saw that there are many possible responses to
frustration other than aggression (regression, depression, or lethargy, for
example) and that there are other sources for aggression than just
frustration (fear-induced aggression, territorial aggression, or aggression
instrumental to satisfying desires, for example). For a brief overview of the
full range of theories that psychologists have considered with respect to the
origins of aggression, see the BBC's H2G2 page, Theories of Aggression (my
audio version refers to an article that is no longer available online). Many
contemporary textbook authors are much more dismissive than Moghaddam of the
displaced aggression idea, and this is likely tied up with the numerous problems
found in research on the frustration-aggression hypothesis. However, a recent
article (cited in Moghaddam's references) by Amy
Marcus-Newhall et al.
claims that "displaced aggression is alive and well". Follow the
link for the abstract and article, but their conclusion from a review of the
numerous laboratory studies (and only laboratory studies) of the phenomena is
that displaced aggression does occur and is more likely to be directed at
someone perceived as similar to oneself than at someone perceived as
dissimilar. Aggression is
another of those psychological phenomena that engenders debate over the role
of nature and nurture. Freud's theory assumes that aggression is a natural
phenomena, and that though it can be repressed, this repression will itself
have psychological consequences. Psychoanalysts frequently speak of finding
ways to 'sublimate' the natural aggression, that is, to direct it into more socially
constructive forms. Social learning theorists, on the other hand, have
concentrated on understanding the ways in which aggression is a learned
response to social situations. Albert Bandura studied the ways in which
children learn aggression through imitation of models they observe in their
environment (including learning from the model of parents who spank them for
their aggressive behaviour toward playmates). Leonard Berkowitz, mentioned by
Moghaddam in relation to the frustration-aggression hypothesis, argued that
the typical response to frustration is actually anger rather than aggression
and that people learn from their environment what is and what is not
appropriate behaviour when one is angry. Developmental
Origins of Aggression, a recent book edited by McGill psychologist
Richard Tremblay, presents several accounts that blend biological and social
accounts of the development of aggression. For a brief review of this book
that also summarizes the material presented, click on the linked book title.
Finally, Thomas Denson has suggested that displaced aggression can be treated
as a personality trait (which doesn't settle whether its origins are nature
or nurture). He argues that some people are more inclined than others to
indulge in this form of aggression. He has developed a questionnaire, the
DAQ, designed to measure the tendency towards displaced aggression. The DAQ and
a journal article describing it and the theory behind it are available on Denson's website. ron sheese March 1, 2008
Last revised
February 15, 2010 |