Aggression Essay

In psychology, the term aggression refers to a range of behaviors that can result in both physical and psychological harm to oneself, others or objects in the environment. Aggression can take on a variety of forms, including: physical, verbal, mental, and emotional. Aggression can also serve a number of different purposes such as asserting dominance, to intimidate or threaten, or to express anger or hostility. Everyone has experienced anger at one point in their lives and some of us have channeled that anger into violence, perhaps by throwing a punch during a heated argument or after too many beers at the bar. Then there's aggression on an greater scale, in the form of murder, wars and genocide. Trying to understand what fuels the different levels of human aggression, from fist fights to nation-on-nation battle, has long preoccupied human biologists.

Through research it has become clear that human aggression is not simply "bad behavior" and that problematic impulsive aggression can be viewed as an identifiable behavioral disorder with genetic, biological, and treatment correlates. This research has occurred through animal studies involving lower and higher order nonhuman subjects and clinical research with people. Animal research has often sparked work in human populations.

Research into the biology and treatment of human aggression has found that when biological substances, such as neurotransmitters and hormones, are capable of inhibiting or facilitating aggression in lower animals. Aggression in humans and animals has been linked to serotonin function (Bethea, Reddy, Robertson & Coleman, 2013). Serotonin is known as nature’s “feel-good” chemical. It is the most widely distributed and most widely studied neurotransmitter in t...

... middle of paper ...

...an aggressive social encounter can cause changes in the brain that lead to depression, anxiety, and susceptibility to immune-related illnesses. Surprisingly, animal research shows that aggressors may suffer from many of these same effects. Aggressive encounters increased circulating levels of stress hormones in both dominant and submissive mice, suggesting that aggression affected both groups similarly. Chronic exposure to social stress increased sensitivity to bacterial infection in both groups, but more so in dominant than in submissive mice.

Unlike most behaviors, individual acts of escalated aggression and violence have the potential to impact society as a whole. Research from fruit flies to humans is helping to decipher the biological causes of these abnormal behaviors. This research promises to reveal new avenues of treatment and prevention in the years to come.