Human Aggression: Pre-disposed or Learned?

By Savo Heleta*

May 2007

Written for “Approaches and Theories of Social Conflict” class

Mphil Conflict Transformation and Management
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Introduction

Are Germans pre-disposed to aggression? Was the brutality that led to the atrocities
committed by them in World War II in their genes? Or did Hitler and the Nazis use the
moment of the enormous economic crisis and great humiliation of Germany after the
Treaty of Versailles to consolidate power, shut down the opposition, and through mass
propaganda persuade German people to follow them in their conquest of Europe and the
greater Third Reich?

In this research paper, I will give a critical assessment of the extent to which human
beings are pre-disposed towards aggression, or conditioned for aggression by their
environment. My goal is to present evidence that will show that humans are not
biologically or instinctively aggressive, but that aggression is something that is learned
and acquired from everyday life experience.

The first part of the paper will present theories and evidence that emphasize biological
factors as the main causes of aggression in humans. The second part will present
theories and evidence that claim that “aggression and hostility are diseases of
development,” as Buss (1961: 190) puts it, and are influenced by the external
environment. The third part of the paper will contrast the two opposing views on human
aggression.

Aggression as a Biological and Instinctive Phenomenon

Before presenting aggression theories, it is important to define what experts mean by

aggressiveness and aggression. James Davies (1970: 613) writes that aggressiveness
implies a “predisposition, an attitude of mind, an underlying characteristic” whose likely
product is a tendency for a violent action, injury, or damage. Leonard Berkowitz (1993:
3) writes that aggression is “any form of behavior that is intended to injure someone
physically or psychologically.” This term is widely accepted and used in the majority of
books that deal with human aggression. Seymour Feshbach (1994: 275), in an attempt
to explain functional differences of aggression states that,

Human aggression entails a complex set of behaviors that vary markedly in

structure, content, context, and consequences. An angry feeling, a thought of
revenge, jostling and “horse-play,” teasing and derogation, fighting over a
contested object, bullying and sadistic actions, murder, and the killing of others in

*
Savo Heleta is a postgraduate student in Conflict Transformation and Management at
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He is the author
of Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia (March 2008, AMACOM
Books, New York). Visit www.savoheleta.com for more info. Savo can be reached at
savo@savoheleta.com.

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 the context of a revolutionary struggle or a conflict between nations, are all
considered to be acts of aggression. They are grouped together because they
have in common the intent to or actions that have the consequence of inflicting
injury and harm to others.

The scientific notion that human aggression could be innate goes back to Albert Einstein
and Sigmund Freud. Even though many scientists before him wrote about the concept of
aggressive instinct, it was Freud who first explored “the psychological aspects of
aggression and the driving force behind it” (Kaufmann, 1970: 14). In 1932, an agency of
the League of Nations invited Einstein to form a group of experts who would try to find a
way of “delivering mankind from the menace of war.” Suspecting that aggression and
violence were rooted deep in human psychology, Einstein asked for an opinion from
Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. “Might it not be that people have within them a
lust for hatred and destruction?” was the main question Einstein asked the experts
(Berkowitz, 1994: 376). Replying to Einstein, Freud wrote the following in his letter:

You express astonishment at the fact that it is so easy to make men enthusiastic
about a war and add your suspicions that there is something at work in them – an
instinct for hatred and destruction – which goes halfway to meet the efforts of the
warmongers. I can only express my entire agreement. We believe in the
existence of an instinct which seeks to destroy and kill (Freud, 1973: 21).

Ashley Montagu (1973: 10) notes that Freud and other early scientists who believed in
aggressive instinct were inspired by “social Darwinism” and ideas such as “the survival of
the fittest,” “the struggle for existence,” and such phrases as “the weakest go to the
wall.”

Freud’s most important theory of aggression that came after his involvement with
Einstein and under the influence of destructiveness of World War I is known as the
“death instinct.” The idea of Freud’s death instinct is that, “the organism’s wish to return
to the state of nothingness whence it emerged… the stronger the death instinct in a
person, the more necessary is it for that person to direct aggression outward against
objects and people” (Buss, 1961: 185). Arnold Buss (1961: 186) writes that Freud was
aware that there is no direct and clear evidence for the existence of a death instinct, but
he explained that the lack of proof was due to its being a “silent instinct.”

One of the best known proponents of aggressive instinct in humans was Konrad Lorenz.
In his bestselling book On Aggression (1966), Lorenz defined aggression as “the fighting
instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species…
aggression is an instinct as any other, and in natural conditions it helps just as much as
any other to ensure the survival of the individual and the species.” Furthermore, for
Lorenz, humans could be easily compared to animals when it comes to an aggressive
drive (Jakobi et. al., 1975: 51-52). Lorenz believed that aggression is not a learned
reaction to external cues, but “species-specific instinct humans have inherited from their
anthropoid ancestors in the service of evolutionary adaptation and survival” (Kim, 1976:
254). Erich Fromm (1973: 43) writes that, for Lorenz, human aggression is not a
reaction to stimuli from the external environment, “but a ‘built-in’ inner excitation that
seeks for release and will find expression regardless of how adequate the outer stimulus
is.”

Berkowitz (1994: 381), disagreeing with Fromm only about the outside stimuli, writes
that Lorenz maintained that, “an unknown substance or excitation builds up
spontaneously in instinctual centers within the nervous system of an organism and
impels the organism to respond in a specific way to particular stimuli in the surrounding
situation.” Widely recognized as a founder of modern ethology, Lorenz was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1973 (Kim, 1976: 253).

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Another theory that intends to connect biology and human aggressiveness says that the
males are biologically predisposed toward aggressive behavior when compared to
females. In 1974, Maccoby and Jacklin published an article in which they gave reasons
why biological sex differences appear to be involved in aggression. One of the reasons
was the fact that males are in most cases more aggressive than females in all human
societies. Another reason was that “aggression is related to levels of sex hormones and
can be changed by experimental administration of these hormones.” They asserted that
cross-cultural evidence on sex differences in aggression provided support for their notion
that the sex difference and hostility are rooted in biological factors (Tieger, 1980: 943-
944).

Writing about male youth violence, David Farrington (1998: 441) explores the
predictors, causes, and correlates of aggression and violence. He notes that some
research shows that violent youth tend to have “low resting heart rates.” This leads
some experts to believe that low heart rate indicates low autonomic arousal (leading to
sensation seeking and risk taking) and/or fearlessness. Farrington illustrates this with a
Cambridge Study which discovered that, “twice as many boys with low heart rate (sixty
five beats per minute or less) at the age of eighteen were convicted for committing
violent acts.

Another possible biological and genetic cause of violence and aggression that Farrington
points out is high blood serotonin level. According to Farrington, “neurotransmitters are
chemicals stored in brain cells that carry information between the cells” and serotonin is
one of them and “has been most reliably linked to violence.” The Dunedin Study
conducted in New Zealand found that males convicted for serious violence tended to
have high blood serotonin levels (1998: 441-442).

This part of the paper has examined theories and evidence that support the notion that
aggression and violence are innate in humans. I looked at Freud’s death instinct,
Lorenz’s aggressive instinct in humans, Maccoby and Jacklin’s gender differences as a
predisposition toward aggression, and two possible biological and genetic causes for
aggressive behavior – low resting heart rates and high blood serotonin level. The next
part will examine the opposing view that finds the causes of aggression in the external
environment.

Aggression – Influenced by the Environment

This part of the paper will present theories and evidence that support the notion that the
causes of aggression could be traced back to the influences from the environment in
which people are brought up and that human aggression is something that is learned,
first in childhood but also over the span of a lifetime. Sometimes, people are forced to
become aggressive and violent when their development is hindered. In other instances,
people remember that aggressiveness can pay off – they learn in the course of growing
up that they can settle disputes by being aggressive towards others (Berkowitz, 1993:
142).

One of the oldest and a still commonly used hypothesis that describes aggression as a
reactive form of behavior is “frustration-aggression hypothesis.” Established first in 1939
by Dollard et al. and since then significantly modified after criticisms from the scientific
community, it reads that, “frustration produces instigations to a number of different
types of responses, one of which is instigation to aggression” (Buss, 1961: 27-28).
According to Herbert Selg (1975: 11), elements of the hypothesis were derived from the
1848 Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx, who maintained that the “exploitation
of the workers will frustrate them that they will be bound, sooner or later, to rise up
against their oppressors.” Roger Johnson (1972: 133) claimed that the authors were also
inspired by Freud’s work on motivational antecedents that cause frustration.

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Arnold Buss (1961: 28) writes that in 1941, Abraham Maslow disagreed that simple
frustration would lead to aggression but still supported the overall idea of the
hypothesis. He believed that there had to be a more serious attack or threat to cause
aggression. In 1944, Rosenzweig noted that, “non-threatening stimuli would not lead to
aggression but that threatening stimuli would cause aggressive behavior.” Buss claims
that most psychologists generally accepted the frustration-aggression hypothesis,
denying any antecedent to aggression other than frustration.

Writing about the limits of frustration-aggression hypothesis, Buss (1961: 28) claimed
that aggressive behavior may occur because it has previously led to a reward and not
because it is aggravated by a frustrating situation. Similarly, it could be a case of
scapegoating. Berkowitz (1993: 77) writes that scapegoating happens when a victim is
assaulted mainly because he or she is available and unable to attack back. When the
attacked are afraid to punish the real attacker, they often shift their aggression onto
someone else who is weaker.

Before 1939, Leonard Eron (1994: 3) writes, a large majority of psychologists considered
human aggression to be instinctual and inherent. The main value of frustration-
aggression hypothesis is that it led to a body of research that focused on causes of
aggression other than biological and genetic.

In 1973, Bandura introduced a social learning theory that puts emphasis on external
environmental cues as elicitors of aggression. He proposed that aggressive behavior is
learned and maintained through environmental experiences, “and that learning of
aggression is controlled by reinforcing contingencies and punishment in a fashion similar
to the learning of any new behaviors” (Eron, 1994: 5).

Between 1960 and 1982, Leonard Eron (1994: 5-6) and his colleagues conducted a
longitudinal study and found support to Bandura’s social learning theory. According to
their findings, children’s aggression will increase when they are exposed to aggressive
role-models. Furthermore, they found that if parents punish their children physically,
they often serve as negative models for future aggression committed by the children.

Harry Kaufmann (1970: 57) believes that a father who insults or physically attacks other
people in front of his children (especially in front of his male children), acts not only as a
role-model but “often encourages his son(s) to ‘stand up for himself,’ presumably also
reviling him for any sign of ‘cowardice’ exemplified by avoiding a fight.”

Analyzing laboratory studies of aggression, Richard Walters (1966: 61) claims that it is
more common for aggressive parents to have aggressive children than for parents who
are relatively non-aggressive. Walters notes that parents are not the only ones who
shape the social behavior of their kids. Children can become aggressive even if their
parents are not but they live in a violent environment. Writing about the importance of
childhood years in the formation of individuals, Saul (Saul as quoted in Buss, 1961: 190)
claims that,

Hostility is a disease of development and has its chief source within the
personality. The distortions which cause it may be in the excessive demands or
hostile images insofar as an individual’s whole way of thinking and outlook are
warped by the persisting emotional effects of unwholesome childhood influences.

Similar to Bandura’s social learning theory is the attachment theory by Ainsworth (1979)
and Sroufe (1983). According to this theory, children who experience insensitive care in
their early years develop insecure attachments and come to believe that others will treat
them badly. These beliefs and feelings help to “develop dispositions to initiate conflicts,
oppose actions of others, and behave aggressively” (Perry et. al., 1995: 303). David

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Farrington (1998: 445) writes about McCord’s Cambridge-Summerville Youth Study from
1979, which found that, “the strongest predictor at age ten of later convictions for
violence (up to age forty-five) were poor parental supervision; parental aggression,
including harsh, punitive discipline; and parental conflict.” In later studies, McCord found
that the majority of violent offenders had experienced conflict at home in their
childhood, and lacked parental affection, supervision, and good discipline.

Another theory that supports the notion that aggression is learned is Patterson’s theory
from 1982. Patterson claims that the way parents manage everyday conflicts between
themselves and their children has a profound effect on their children’s aggression later in
life. He believes that children develop aggressive behavior when their parents are unable
to “stop the children from escalating the intensity of coercive behavior during family
conflicts.” If parents permit conflicts to escalate, Patterson hypothesizes, or occasionally
reinforce the child’s coercive behavior by retreating, this teaches children that it is
worthwhile to be negative and aggressive when they want to get something from others
(Perry et. al., 1995: 306). Herbert Selg (1975: 18) supports this hypothesis and claims
that aggressive behavior is easily learned because it often brings success. Whenever
parents pay attention to screaming children, either through silence or punishment, they
are reinforcing their rebelliousness.

Walters (1966: 68) writes that using violent means to punish children’s aggressive
behavior will in the end serve as a negative role-model to the children. Frequent physical
or other aggressive forms of punishment by parents who are trying to suppress
children’s aggressive behavior will often defeat their own purpose and will only serve as
aggressive models. Walters believes that in this case, children may stop behaving
aggressively in front of the parents but express their violent behavior in front of their
peers. Writing about predictors, causes, and correlates of male youth violence, David
Farrington (1998: 446) states that,

Harsh physical punishment by parents and child physical abuse typically predict
violent offending by sons. A New York State study of 900 children reported that
harsh parental punishment at age eight predicted not only a man’s history of
arrests for violence up to age of thirty, but also the severity of the man’s
punishment of his child and history of spouse assault… In the most famous
longitudinal study of abused children (over 900 with nearly 700 controls), Widom
(1989) discovered that recorded child physical abuse and neglect predicted later
arrests for violence independently of other predictors such as gender, ethnicity,
and age.

Leonard Berkowitz (1993: 257), asking why childhood exposure to violence promotes
adult aggression, gives the following explanation: “People who watch lots of aggression
may become relatively indifferent to violent behavior. Their inhibitions against
aggression may be fairly weak because they don’t believe it is especially bad to attack
others to further their own interests.”

Anthony Storr (1968: 44-45) believes that even giving children unconditional attention
and care would not, in many cases, prevent their aggressiveness. To the surprise of
many parents, Storr writes, the children who experience all the liberty, love, and luxury
in the world often become spoiled, emotionally disturbed, and even more aggressive
than if they had been exposed to firm discipline. If parents consistently submit to the
wishes of their children, the latter will in the end come to believe that they can get
everything they want and that their “every passing whim will immediately be gratified.”

Group aggression is another aspect of aggressive behavior that is influenced by the

external environment. It is believed that even nonaggressive individuals, when under
pressure from a group, could act aggressively and violently. Mummendey and Otten
(1993: 152) write about “one of the best known theoretical approaches to the

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phenomenon of collective aggression:”

Postulating deindividuating processes within social groups lower consciousness

about normative concerns and moral responsibility. Deindividuation is influenced
by a number of input variables such as anonymity, diffusion of responsibility,
changes in time perspective, and changes in states of consciousness, and
explains conditions that lead to seemingly meaningless and irrational kinds of
violence and destruction.

An example of deindividuation is the military, where soldiers in most cases cannot act on
their own but have to follow their superiors’ orders even if they believe that their actions
are wrong. According to Kim (1976: 265), “soldiers in modern times are being constantly
indoctrinated through positive and negative reinforcements to subordinate their
individual impulses to the dictates of the state.” Writing about the origins of wars,
Stanislav Andreski (1964: 130) wrote that, if humans had an innate tendency for war
and killing, “it would not be necessary to indoctrinate them with warlike virtues.” The
fact that so much time was and is devoted in many societies to such indoctrination
proves that “there is no instinct for war in humans,” concludes Andreski. Roger Johnson
(1972: 2) states that wars do not start because soldiers have an urge to kill. Soldiers
fight because they are ordered to do so. Fromm (1973: 284-285) notes that anyone with
knowledge of history knows that wars are not caused by destructive urges or instincts,
but by motives such as “land for cultivation, riches, slaves, raw materials, markets,
expansion, defense, and a wish for revenge.”

In their norm theory, Turner and Kilian (1972) suggested that people in large crowds
often behave in “accordance with social norms that emerge in the collective situation.
The individual’s motive to conform to the ‘emergent norm’ is a desire for social approval
and fear of social disapproval” (Mummendey and Otten, 1993: 153). Rabbie’s theory of
norm enhancement stresses that group behavior is not always aggressive and violent,
but only if aggressive behavior is in accordance with the popular norm of the given
circumstances (Mummendey and Otten, 1993: 153). Writing about cultural norms and
situational determinants of aggression, Harry Kaufman (1970: 65) makes an interesting
point about the influence of the external setting on human behavior. He notes that,
“even bullies rarely fight in a church or in a funeral parlor. Even an entirely meek
individual may kill without feeling compunction in the ‘appropriate’ setting, such as a
national conflict or a riot.”

Pressured or influenced by peers, even those who are not aggressive and violent could
become so, especially in the case of young people who do not want to be seen as weak
in the eyes of their friends. Farrington (1998: 448) writes that peer delinquency was
found to be the primary influence on serious violent offending in Elliot’s casual model
from 1994 and the Rochester Youth Development Study.” Furthermore, Elliot concluded
in another study in 1996 that, “delinquency causes delinquent peer bonding and
delinquent peer bonding causes delinquency.”

Socio-economic problems and an inability to satisfy basic human needs can lead people
to become violent and aggressive, either toward their family members, the community in
which they live, or other people and other communities. In some instances poverty can
force people, who otherwise would never commit a crime, to rob a store or someone’s
private property and even kill in the process.

Davies (1970: 618) argues that, when the basic needs that are common for all humans
are severely frustrated, this is likely to cause aggressive behavior. Berkowitz (1993:
262) believes that, when people are bothered by their inability to afford the things they
and their families need, and disturbed by the failure of their self-esteem, “their nerves
are raw, and they may easily become violent.” Andreski (1964: 132) states that
unemployment, apart from bringing poverty into communities, “breaks up social bonds

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and creates a large mass of uprooted men, whose frustrated desire for a place in society
may lead them to favor measures of mass regimentation.”

Those pressured by unemployment and poverty often end up abusing alcohol and drugs
in order to escape from reality. The influence of alcohol is seen as one of the causes of
aggression and conflict escalation. According to Pruitt and Kim (2004: 127), “alcohol is
believed to have contributed to 64 percent of the homicide cases in Philadelphia between
1948 and 1953.” Alcohol creates effects that influence people to see provocations often
larger than they are and reduces “social and cognitive inhibitions,” consequently
increasing the probability of expressing anger.

John Burton (1997: 10) writes that not only economic problems, but also the lack of
recognition and respect for people’s identity can force people to protest using any means
available. This often includes violence and aggression. Typical responses for young
people include “leaving home and school, joining street gangs, and enacting roles of
violence at community and ethnic levels that attract attention and provide some
individual recognition.” Burton (1997: 20) believes that these kinds of protests can often
have positive outcomes, noting the example of worldwide protests against colonialism
that often involved violence and aggression and lead to its abolishment.

In a book titled Aggression: A Social Psychological Analysis, Leonard Berkowitz writes

about strategic aggression that some people use to achieve their goals. One of his
examples is Adolf Hitler and his anti-Semitic policies before and during World War II.
Quoting Needler (1960), Berkowitz claims that Hitler used anti-Semitism to achieve his
contradictory appeals. “He could tell the German middle class there would be no more
labor troubles after Jewish agitators were removed and still say to the workers that their
economic difficulties would be lessened when Jewish capitalists were exterminated.”
Berkowitz acknowledges that Hitler believed in many of the accusations against the
Jews, but he used anti-Semitism principally for political gains. “Needler maintained that
Hitler was also strongly opposed to Christianity as a religion, but did not express these
sentiments because he knew there was little to be gained by doing so” (Berkowitz, 1962:
182-183).

Can a violent movie influence people to become aggressive against someone else in real
life? Huesmann and Miller (1994: 180) note that the majority of experts studying
aggressive behavior in humans think that exposure to media violence alone cannot
influence the development of violent antisocial behavior in the majority of people.
However, media violence is seen as an important influence, especially in the case of
children.

Robert Baron (1977: 109-110) believes that individuals exposed to scenes of violence
often acquire new ways of aggressing and attacking and reduce their restraint against
engaging in violence. He states that evidence shows that continued exposure to scenes
of violence “may produce a gradual desensitization to both aggression and signs of pain
on the part of others.” Pruitt and Kim (2004: 127) believe that continuously seeing
aggressive behavior on TV can have an effect on people, especially when aggression is
presented as realistic.

According to the information processing script theory of Huesmann (1988), social

behavior is often controlled by “programs for behavior that are established during
person’s early development” (Huesmann and Miller, 1994: 161). Huesmann believes that
children store in their memories “general scripts” for aggression that were previously
seen on TV and that the new images of violence, in the media or in the real world, “may
trigger the use of previously learned aggressive scripts as well as provide material for
new scripts” (Huesmann and Miller, 1994: 165-166). Kaufmann (1970: 72) writes that
seeing cruel acts performed on TV not only by criminals but also the people who are on
the side of the law may lead to “a coarsening of a child’s sensibilities or, to use the

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psychologist’s language, they provide models which convey the acceptance of
aggression.”

This part of the paper has examined theories and evidence that support the notion that
aggression and violence are learned and influenced by the external environment. I have
looked at the frustration-aggression hypothesis, social learning theory, attachment
theory, Patterson’s theory, group aggression and deindividuation, and norm theory.
Furthermore, I have identified socio-economic problems and the lack of recognition and
respect for people as causes of hostility and aggression, and I have described the
influence of strategic aggression and the media on the development of aggression and
antisocial behavior in humans. The next part will contrast the opposing views on human
aggression.

Contrasting the Two Opposing Views on Human Aggression

After examining the available literature and evidence used in this research about the
causes of human aggression, I strongly believe that aggression in humans is something
that is learned and acquired from everyday life experience. This part of the paper will
contrast the two opposing views on human aggression.

As Berkowitz (1993: 142) writes, many people learn in the course of growing up that
aggression often pays off and “that we can settle disputes in our favor or get what we
want by threatening others.” There are those who become aggressive under the
influence of their peers or when they are in large groups of people and behave according
to the social norms of the moment. Some, like Hitler, use strategic aggression to achieve
their goals. Some people are aggressive because they were exposed to violence and
malevolence in their childhood or had aggressive role models.

John Burton (1997: 149) believes that the family is the most important pillar in all
societies that determines if people will grow up and become aggressive and violent or
not:

If societies are to deal with conflict and violence at its sources, the institution of
the family is probably the main one which requires attention. The probability is
that a great deal of conflict, violence, and crime can be traced to early childhood.
Whether it is serial killings, killings in ethnic conflicts by military regimes,
repressive administrations, ruthless management or child abuse by teachers and
official custodians, the sources can frequently be traced to early child control and
perhaps abuse of those responsible for this control.

Describing the concept of aggression, Roger Johnson (1972: 41) says that, “aggression
is not an accident of nature, an invention of the Devil, or a product of the 20th century. It
represents behavior which has adapted through the process of evolution to the needs of
survival.” Baron (1977: 78) notes that aggression and violence do not happen in a
“social vacuum.” Instead, such behaviors often “seem to stem from aspects of the social
environment that instigate their occurrence, and influence both the forms and
directions.” A study of 37 school shootings in America conducted by the United States
Secret Service in 2002, shows that most attacks were committed by students with some
kind of grievance from the past and not because the perpetrators were biologically
predisposed toward violence and brutality. More than half of the studied school shootings
had revenge as a motive (BBC News, 19 April 2007).

Kriesberg (1998: 33) writes that survival of humans is not possible without nurturing
and socialization in external environment. He notes that, “posting human nature without
socialization is really impossible; it cannot be conclusive and must be quite general.”
Davies (1970: 622) claims that humans have an innate tendency to fulfill their basic

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needs but they do not have an instinct to fulfill these needs by hostile and violent
means. In his article, Violence and Aggression: Innate or Not?, Davies (1970: 622)
compares the innate destructiveness in humans to that of water and electricity:

If it were proper in troubled times to talk about man’s innate aggressiveness, it

would be proper to talk in stormy weather about water’s natural destructiveness
after observing what happens when a dam breaks or about electricity’s natural
aggressiveness after observing how a circuit explodes when it is overloaded.

Johnson (1972: 3) states that some of the early popular notions on human aggression
that influenced many later scientists (such as Lorenz) were “fundamentally myths
without any scientific foundation,” giving Freud’s instinct for death and destruction as an
example. As it was noted in the first part of the paper, even Freud himself was aware
that there was no credible evidence to prove the existence of a death instinct, but he still
claimed that it existed. Believing in something that cannot be proven may be acceptable
in religion, but it is not suitable for important issues in social sciences that deal with
topics such as the causes of human aggression.

Many critics of Lorenz’s work disagree with his theory of aggressive instinct because he
mainly used the results of research done on animals. Samuel Kim (1976: 264) writes
that Lorenz’s theory of aggression was developed largely from the observations of
animal behavior – “the hunting behavior of the dog, food-begging of a young bird,
fighting in a fish, and courtship flights of butterflies.” Leonard Berkowitz (1973: 42)
writes that Lorenz attempted to explain various human actions by “drawing gross
analogies between these behaviors and supposedly similar response patterns exhibited
by other animal species… For Lorenz, man is remarkably similar to the Greylag goose.”

In a critique of Lorenz’s work, T. C. Schneirla (1973: 146) writes about observing

animals and using the results to construct theories about human behavior, noting that,
“the question is not whether results from investigation of behavior in lower animals are
applicable to man, but whether the application is as simple a matter as Lorenz’s
procedures imply.” The fact that humans differ from animals in being “the only primate
that kills and tortures members of their own species without any reason, either biological
or economic, and feel satisfaction in doing so” (Fromm, 1973: 25), does not give much
credit to the research on animals to find the causes of human aggression. Fromm (1973:
251) points out that, if human aggression was similar to the aggression of other species,
“particularly of our nearest relative, the chimpanzee, human society would be rather
peaceful and non-violent.”

Evaluating the works of zoologists, primatologists, and ethologists, van den Berghe
(1974: 778) claims that one of the causes of human aggression is competition for
resources. Increase in human population is related to intensive competition, thus
creating the ground for more hostility and aggression among people. If resources stay
the same, overcrowding will force people to fight for food, land, and other scarce assets
in order to satisfy their basic needs.

Commenting on the instinct theory of aggression, Buss (1961: 196-197) wrote that, not
only is aggression a universal response in humans, but so is walking. “No one regards
walking as an instinct, despite its pervasiveness; a behavior’s being widespread is not a
sufficient reason for labeling it instinctual.” Critiquing Lorenz’s model of the aggressive
instinct, Jakobi, Selg, and Belschner say the following:

Does the ubiquity of human aggression, or the fact that even small children show
aggression, prove the existence of an aggressive instinct? The ubiquity merely
proves that, wherever men may live, aggressive acts lead to success. As for the
early age at which children show aggression, it must be stressed that, at the
same age, they have learned many other behavior patterns as well: they can

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 utter a few words and lift up objects. Must we describe everything the infant does
as an instinct? In that case we should also have to speak of a nose-picking
instinct, for nose-picking is another universal phenomenon that appears early on
in the individual’s life (Jakobi et. al., 1975: 55-56).

The majority of the experts who write on gender differences and aggressiveness tend to
oppose the theory proposed by Maccoby and Jacklin that males are biologically
predisposed toward aggressive behavior when compared to females. The most
commonly accepted view is that the gender differences toward violence and aggression
are influenced by the environment in which people are brought up. Johnson (1972: 108)
writes that it is true that hormones influence behavior, but at the same time “masculine”
and “feminine” behavior is also influenced by the outside environment and “the long
socialization process through which children learn society’s values.”

“All human behavior is regulated and formed by cultural factors,” write Lagerspetz and
Bjorkqvist (1994: 132). “Accordingly, the difference in aggressiveness between the
sexes has been attributed to their social roles, in addition to or instead of biological
factors.” Berkowitz (1993: 395) writes that the majority of social scientists find the
causes of aggression in the traditional social roles that have been assigned to men and
women.

In an article titled On the Biological Basis of Sex Differences in Aggression, Todd Tieger
(1980: 956) notes that, “males are encouraged to cultivate aggressive ‘talents’ in a
competition-oriented economic system, while females are discouraged from similar goals
at the price of losing their ‘femininity.’” Buss (1961: 283) writes that males in their
youth are pressured by the environment to be active, dominant, and competitive, with
an emphasis on physical aggressiveness. At the same time, females are taught to be
non-aggressive, with fighting strictly taboo. These stereotypes influence and maintain
male aggressiveness and female passivity all over the world.

Writing about the important issues at stake when scientists from the two opposing sides
discuss human aggression and its causes, Morton Hunt (1973: 22) gives his opinion:

If people are largely controlled by their instincts and if their behavior is encoded
in their genes, they and their future can only be regarded with pessimism; people
must then be viewed as innately dangerous and brutal and dealt with accordingly.
If the poor, the indolent, the criminal, the greedy and the sadistic are acting
according to their hereditary inclinations, there is little point in trying to change
them. But if people are not instinct-controlled, but have a highly educable and
modifiable nature, then it is possible to be hopeful for the future, despite the
wretched history of humankind.

The Seville Statement from 1989, drafted by an international group of scientists from the
fields of genetics, anthropology, psychology, biochemistry, and others have concluded
that aggressive behavior and violence are not “genetically programmed into human
nature” (Kriesberg, 1998: 35). In his book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,
Erich Fromm (1973: 22) says that those who are unable or afraid to change destruction
around them are the people who support the theory of inborn violence and aggression in
humans. “This theory of an innate aggressiveness easily becomes an ideology that helps
to soothe the fear of what is to happen and to rationalize the sense of impotence,” writes
Fromm.

This part of the paper has contrasted the two opposing views on aggression in humans.
The evidence presented suggests that there is not enough credible proof that aggression
is caused by an instinct or primarily by biological and genetic factors. This author’s
opinion is that the theorists and experts who support the notion that human aggression
is learned and influenced by the external environment make a well supported case for

Copyright © Savo Heleta 10

their claims.

Conclusion

The goal of this research paper was to give a critical assessment of the extent to which
human beings are pre-disposed towards aggression, or conditioned for aggression by
their environment. The information and the evidence presented shows that in the last 50
years the majority of experts have moved from seeing aggression as an instinctual
behavior to thinking about aggression as something that is influenced by the external
environment and learned in a course of a lifetime.

As Leonard Eron (1994: 9) writes, this second view is a more optimistic way of looking at
the causes of aggressive behavior since “what is learned can be unlearned and new ways
of behaving can be adopted.” John Burton (1997: 17) believes that, if aggression is
inherent in humans, then we just have to live with everyday social problems and
violence. But if the outside environment stimulates aggression, “then at least some
reduction of conflict and violence would be possible.”

This takes us back to the example of Germany. If destructive behavior could not be
unlearned or at least reduced, how could Germany and its people, in less than a century,
change from one of the most brutal nations in the history of humankind to a modern
European country where the human rights of all its citizens are respected?

Copyright © Savo Heleta 11

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