Aggression, Social Psychology, Threat, and Communication

A couple of weeks ago, I was TAing a Social Psychology lecture on the topic of "Aggression".  A big topic, a great topic... Something you can really sink your teeth into... Metaphor that works on many levels.

At some point in the class, an interesting question came up (posed by me! yey TA!): "Why do people aggress towards others?"

Two answers really grabbed my attention: Threat (survival) and communication.

Threat, I had expected (it was in the readings). Communication, I had not.

But I loved these answers. Both answers really got me thinking (this is the point in the class where I lost everybody though.) Here's the thing about the "communication" answer though. I, too, have often found that there's nothing like a good fight to really connect with somebody. You bond on a deep level when you're willing to just go to the depths of your soul and pull out all that is most intense (ugly? maybe beautiful?) and show it to somebody else. That's really something. (Granted not all aggression gets this epic, but I think we can all agree that it can. "300" anybody?)

Here's the thing though. I wanted to get the students thinking about how these two motivations to aggress could come together and could grow apart.  Here's the reading in a nutshell: "People aggress towards others if they are under threat, because looking down on others makes us feel better about ourselves" (not verbatim, Wills, 1981). But, there's more: "Unless EVERYBODY is under threat. In that case, we just make friends." (also not verbatim, called "shared-fate" in Wills, 1981).

What does that tell you? (Well, who knows what it tells you, this is psychology, ok?) But I think you could make the argument that aggression is communication.  Does it stem from the need to communicate or does it EQUAL communication, that is another question. But I think you could pose the same one with threat, couldn't you? Is aggression a response to threat, or is it an expression of threat?

Hm. I don't know that that's known. Would probably depend on how we define aggression and threat and everything else. We could draw lines in the sand to make them distinct but they probably overlap.

I'm getting bogged down in the weeds. The point is, threat can lead to aggression, but it can also lead to affiliation (read: communication). That would put the two on par (aggression = communication).

But you could go deeper. You could say, we have a need to connect with other human beings. And you could say that aggression is one of the ways to do this. There are other ways: conversation, sex, writing, ... But how often have you gotten angry at somebody and lashed out because they just didn't get what you were saying or how you were feeling and you didn't know how else to tell them - but you really needed them to know you?