Individual Determinants of Aggression: Personality, Attitudes, and Genes

Abstract

It is a truism in social psychology that behavior is a joint function of the person and the environment. In short, an individual’s actions in any given context are assumed to stem both from various aspects of the situation and from the numerous states, dispositions, or characteristics that he or she brings to it. This is an eminently reasonable generalization and one that has been supported by several decades of social research (cf. Shaw & Costanzo, 1970). Thus, it is not at all surprising to learn that it has also been widely accepted in the study of aggression. Indeed, most recent theorizing concerned with such behavior has assumed that it stems from both external variables involving the situation or environment and internal factors centering on individual aggressors (e.g., Bandura, 1973; Goldstein, 1975; Zillmann, 1978).