Frustration Aggression Hypothesis

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Definition

Dollard et al. (1939) proposed the frustration-aggression hypothesis as a social-psychological approach to explaining the origins of aggression.

Here is an outline of the stages of the hypothesis:

• An attempt to achieve a goal is blocked (goal interference).

• Frustration occurs.

• An aggressive drive is created.

• Aggressive behaviour is displayed (cathartic).

How aggressive someone is in the frustration-aggression model depends on how invested they were in reaching their goals and how close they were to achieving them before the inference.

The more they are hindered by the interference also influences how aggressive they may be. If the interference pushes them back huge amounts, they will be more aggressive, according to Dollard et al. (1939).

The aggression cannot always be directed at the source of frustration, as the source may be:

1. Abstract, such as lack of money.

2. Too powerful, and you risk punishment by showing aggression towards them; for example, a person may be frustrated by their boss at work, but they cannot direct their anger towards the boss for fear of repercussions. Aggression is then displaced onto someone or something else.

3. Unavailable at the time; for example, your teacher gives you a bad grade for an assignment, but you do not notice until she has left the classroom.

Due to these reasons, people may direct their aggression towards something or someone else.

Frustration-Aggression Theory: Examples

Dollard et al. (1939) modified the frustration-aggression hypothesis in 1941 to state that aggression was one of several outcomes of frustration. They believed the frustration-aggression hypothesis could explain animal, group, and individual behaviours.

The frustration-aggression hypothesis has been used to explain real-world behaviour such as scapegoating. In times of crisis and as levels of frustration amass (for example, during an economic crisis), frustrated groups may release their aggression against a convenient target, often people of a minority group.

Berkowitz Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

In 1965, Leonard Berkowitz attempted to combine Dollard et al.’s (1939) understanding of frustration with more recent understandings of frustration as an internal process affected by environmental cues.

Aggression, according to Berkowitz, manifests not as a direct result of frustration but as a triggered event from environmental cues. The revised version of the frustration-aggression hypothesis is thus dubbed the aggressive-cues hypothesis.

Berkowitz tested their theory in Berkowitz and LePage (1967):

• In this study, they examined weapons as aggression-eliciting instruments.
• 100 male university students were shocked, supposedly by a peer, 1-7 times. They were then able to shock the person back if they wanted to.
• Various objects were placed next to the shock key to shock the peer, including a rifle and revolver, a badminton racket, and no objects.
• Those who had received seven shocks and were in the presence of weapons (more so the guns) acted the most aggressively, suggesting the aggressive cue of the weapon elicited more aggressive responses.

However, various issues exist within the study in that it relies on data from male students, so it is not generalisable to female students, for instance.

Fig. 2 - Negative affect leads to aggressive inclinations.

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis Evaluation

The frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests that aggressive behaviour is cathartic, but the evidence doesn’t support this idea.

There are individual differences in how people respond to frustration.

• Someone may cry instead of becoming aggressive. They may react in a different way reflecting their emotional state. This evidence suggests that the frustration-aggression hypothesis does not entirely explain aggression.

There are methodological flaws in some of the studies.

Much of the research into the frustration-aggression hypothesis was conducted in laboratory environments.

• The results have low ecological validity. It is hard to generalise whether someone would behave the same way to external stimuli as they would in these controlled experiments.

However, Buss (1963) found students who were in a frustrated group were slightly more aggressive than control groups in his experiment, supporting the frustration-aggression hypothesis.

• Task failure, interference with getting money, and interference with getting a better grade all demonstrated an increased level of aggression when compared to the controls in college students.

Criticisms of the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

The frustration-aggression hypothesis strongly influenced decades of research, but it was criticised for its theoretical rigidity and over-generalisation. Later research was focused more on refining the hypothesis, such as the work of Berkowitz, as Berkowitz suggested the theory was too simplistic, it didn't do enough to explain how frustration alone can trigger aggression.

Some other criticisms were:

• The frustration-aggression hypothesis does not explain how aggressive behaviour might arise in different social environments without provocation or feeling frustrated; however, this could be attributed to deindividuation.

• Aggression can be a learned response and does not always happen due to frustration.