Aggression: Evaluating the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

These study notes follow on from the 'Aggression: Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis' notes.

Russell Green (1968) conducted a laboratory experiment where he asked male undergraduate students to undertake a jigsaw puzzle. While they were completing the jigsaw puzzle he organised three different conditions that were designed to raise levels of frustration in the participants. One condition imposed an unattainable time limit to complete the jigsaw; in another condition the jigsaw was impossible to complete; and in a third condition a confederate issued derogatory remarks to the students as they failed to complete the study. In the second part of the study which was reminiscent of the Milgram experiment, participants had the opportunity to give shocks to the confederate if he answered incorrectly on another task. The group of participants who had experienced insults from the confederate gave the highest levels of shocks. All three groups gave more shocks than a control group who had not experienced any frustration conditions. This experiment supports the theory that frustration leads to aggression.

Berkowitz (1967) carried out a laboratory experiment where participants where again given the opportunity to shock a confederate who had previously angered them. However, Berkowitz set up three different conditions: one with an aggressive cue, a gun; one with a non-aggressive cue, a badminton racket; and one with no cue at all. Berkowitz found those participants who were in the presence of the aggressive cue gave higher levels of shocks than the other two groups. The practical applications of this research shed new light on the gun control debate in America. If the presence of guns is more likely to result in aggression, then this 'weapons effect' could have far reaching implications for gun laws.

Research support has mainly come from laboratory experiments, and therefore there are issues of ecological validity that can be questioned. Ecological validity is the extent to which any research can be applied outside of the research setting, in this case a laboratory. Whether the participants in laboratory experiments would carry out actual aggression when faced with an external stimulus that incited aggression is not certain.

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