What is the difference between aggression and violence

Aggression vs Violence. Aggression and violence have become a bane of modern societies with kids and adults hurting others and bringing harm to innocent people through violent behavior.

Psychologists and law enforcement authorities are worried with unprovoked violent behavior exhibited by individuals and trying to find reasons for their aggression. The words violence and aggression are used so commonly and interchangeably that many think them to be synonymous. However, there are differences between aggression and violence that will be talked about in this article.

Like anger, aggression is a human behavior that is found in all human beings and shown through abusive language, damage to objects and property, assault on self and others and violent threats to others. In general, all behavior that can potentially harm others is included in aggression. This harm can take place at either physical or psychological levels and can even be harm to property. Intended behavior to harm others is the point to remember in a definition of aggression which means that aggression is more in intention than in action.

When an angry dog bares his teeth, he is not indulging in violence. Human aggression is very complex and is caused by multiple factors. We will consider a few of the most important internal and external causes of aggression.

Internal causes include anything the individual brings to the situation that increases the probability of aggression. External causes include anything in the environment that increases the probability of aggression.

Finally, we will consider a few strategies for reducing aggression. At what age are people most aggressive? You might be surprised to learn that toddlers 1 to 3 years old are most aggressive. Toddlers often rely on physical aggression to resolve conflict and get what they want. In free play situations, researchers have found that 25 percent of their interactions are aggressive Tremblay, No other group of individuals e.

As children grow older, they learn to inhibit their aggressive impulses and resolve conflict using nonaggressive means, such as compromise and negotiation.

Although most people become less aggressive over time, a small subset of people becomes more aggressive over time. The most dangerous years for this small subset of people and for society as a whole are late adolescence and early adulthood.

For example, to year-olds commit most murders in the U. Federal Bureau of Investigation, At all ages, males tend to be more physically aggressive than females. However, it would be wrong to think that females are never physically aggressive. Among heterosexual partners, women are actually slightly more likely than men to use physical aggression Archer, However, when men do use physical aggression, they are more likely than women to cause serious injuries and even death to their partners.

Some people seem to be cranky and aggressive almost all the time. Aggressiveness is almost as stable as intelligence over time Olweus, Narcissists have inflated egos, and they lash out aggressively against others when their inflated egos are threatened e. It is a common myth that aggressive people have low self-esteem Bushman et al. Psychopaths are people who lack empathy for others. One of the strongest deterrents of aggression is empathy, which psychopaths lack.

One key to keeping aggression in check is to give people the benefit of the doubt. Some people, however, do just the opposite. There are three hostile cognitive biases. The hostile attribution bias is the tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as hostile actions Dodge, For example, if a person bumps into you, a hostile attribution would be that the person did it on purpose and wants to hurt you.

The hostile perception bias is the tendency to perceive social interactions in general as being aggressive Dill et al. For example, if you see two people talking in an animated fashion, a hostile perception would be that they are fighting with each other.

The hostile expectation bias is the tendency to expect others to react to potential conflicts with aggression Dill et al. For example, if you bump into another person, a hostile expectation would be that the person will assume that you did it on purpose and will attack you in return. People with hostile cognitive biases view the world as a hostile place. One of the earliest theories of aggression proposed that aggression is caused by frustration, which was defined as blocking goal-directed behavior Dollard et al.

For example, if you are standing in a long line to purchase a ticket, it is frustrating when someone crowds in front of you. This theory was later expanded to say that all unpleasant events, not just frustrations, cause aggression Berkowitz, Unpleasant events such as frustrations, provocations, social rejections, hot temperatures, loud noises, bad air e. Unpleasant events automatically trigger a fight—flight response.

Alcohol has long been associated with aggression and violence. In fact, sometimes alcohol is deliberately used to promote aggression. It has been standard practice for many centuries to issue soldiers some alcohol before they went into battle, both to increase aggression and reduce fear Keegan, There is ample evidence of a link between alcohol and aggression, including evidence from experimental studies showing that consuming alcohol can cause an increase in aggression e.

Most theories of intoxicated aggression fall into one of two categories: a pharmacological theories that focus on how alcohol disrupts cognitive processes, and b expectancy theories that focus on how social attitudes about alcohol facilitate aggression.

Normally, people have strong inhibitions against behaving aggressively, and pharmacological models focus on how alcohol reduces these inhibitions.

To use a car analogy, alcohol increases aggression by cutting the brake line rather than by stepping on the gas. How does alcohol cut the brake line? Reactive aggression, in its most extreme forms, is violence, but the definition is not reflexive. Not all violence comes from anger and reactive aggression. Violence has, at its root, harm to another as its planned result. Predatory violence, for example, is behavior in which the hunter seeks the hunted. In the animal world, the stealthy lion waits patiently in the brush for its prey to wander close enough to be ambushed.

In the world of serial killers who hunt their victims, predators often do not have an increase in heart rate or sympathetic nervous system activity that usually accompanies anger. Anger is not related to this activity and in fact would interfere with the ability to hunt.

Terry and Jackson clarified sport violence as harm-inducing behavior outside the rules of sport, bearing no direct relationship to the competitive goals of sport. This definition nicely carved out a type of violence different from society's violence.

In an attempt to explain sport violence, I developed the Abrams model of sports violence figure 1. Understanding that injury can be part of the game, we can differentiate violence in the same way that we differentiate aggression. Incidental violence is violence that does not have harming another as its sole goal; it is directed toward sport goals. In contrast, reactive or hostile violence has the specific goal of causing harm to someone else. Both represent behaviors that may go beyond the rules of the sport, but incidental violence is an extension of acceptable behavior.

Checking in hockey provides a useful example. The line that differentiates checking from cross-checking or boarding, both of which are penalties, is often blurry. Overzealous players can certainly have their behavior spill over to being illegal. This behavior is different from reactive violence, in which the behavior is retaliatory. This kind of behavior can also be broken down into two categories. The first is the spontaneous response.

There are some players who pride themselves on their ability to get inside their opponents' heads and will deliberately provoke them to take them off their game. New York Rangers forward Sean Avery, often described as an agitator, is particularly proficient at this.

So, the player provokes the other repeatedly, perhaps by checking them with their stick. Finally, the provoking player checks the first player one too many times, and the player turns and swings the stick at the opponent's head. The response, although extreme, was not planned. This is spontaneous reactive aggression and is directly related to anger. Anger management programs specifically target reducing this type of behavior.

More immediately though, the league or organization must penalize, fine, or suspend players engaging in such behavior as it can very easily cause serious injury. Home Excerpts Learn the difference between anger, aggression, and violence. A New Vernacular I believe that the definitions used in the sport psychology field regarding anger and violence require streamlining.

Anger Anger is a normal emotion. Aggression What does it mean to be aggressive? Violence Reactive aggression, in its most extreme forms, is violence, but the definition is not reflexive.

Active Aging. Coaching and Officiating. Fitness and Health. Health Education. Nutrition and Healthy Eating.

Physical Education. Recreation and Leisure. Sport Management and Sport Business. Sports and Activities.