Aggression and School Violence - Essay Example

Weiten (2001) defines aggression as "any behavior that is intended to hurt someone, either physically or verbally" (p. 538). When looking at this topic from the biological, behavioral, and psycho-social models, there are some similarities.
The biological perspective states that one of the monoamines may be responsible for aggressive behavior. Specifically, the serotonin in the neural circuits is responsible for modulating aggression in animals, but in human behavior, serotonin activity can cause impulsive behavior and aggression (Weiten, 2001). The biological perspective can be compared to the behavioral perspective because it presents a reason why an individual may exhibit the behavior.

Freud believed that aggressive behavior was normal and it was a way to relieve stress to get to catharsis. He defined catharsis as the "release of emotional tension" (Weiten, 2001, p. 539). However, other researchers have noted that aggressive behavior does not relieve stress; instead, it increases this behavior. Carol and Hodges (2006) studied aggressive boys and found that one contributing factor to aggression in boys was the fact that they tended to have aggressive friends. Another interesting point that Carol and Hodges found was that when groups of aggressive boys get together, they may become aggressive toward specific victims. In looking at the reports about the Columbine High School shootings, the boys that were being bullied were considered misfits because they were not athletes. This would support the research of Carol and Hodges, especially if these children experienced aggressive behavior in their early adolescence. They suggested that if the relationship between the aggressors and the victims was studied more, there may be interventions that could be found early to stop the behavior before it starts.

The psycho-social perspectives take into consideration both the biological and behavioral perspectives. Newman and Fox (2009) researched aggression in American high school and college settings between 2002 and 2008. They studied five factors that may influence whether children became aggressive enough to kill: 1) the shooter's perception of themselves as being outside the "in crowd" 2) psychosocial problems like depression, mental illness, or abuse 3) "Cultural scripts" that suggest to them that shooting is a way to solve problems, especially when it will change their status from loser to antihero 4) the school's inability to identify that the student may turn to armed violence, even though they may have started to show problems of being a troubled teen and 5) their ability to have access to gun and bombs (Newman and Fox, 2009, p. 1294). The researchers state that before the Columbine shootings, many researchers thought that violent films and video games created this extremely aggressive behavior but these researchers found that "problematic social groups" (p. 1304) were more the cause than video games and violent films. Read More