Aggression

Aggression
Aggressive behavior is any behavior that is intended to cause injury, pain, suffering, damage, or destruction. While aggressive behavior is often thought of as purely physical, verbal attacks such as screaming and shouting or belittling and humiliating comments aimed at causing harm ad suffering can also be a type of aggression. What is key to the definition of aggression is that whenever harm is inflicted, be it physical or verbal, it is intentional.
Questions about the causes of aggression have long bee of concern to both social and biological scientists. Theories about the causes of aggression cover a broad spectrum, ranging from those with biological or instructive emphases to those that portray aggression as a learned behavior.
Numerous theories are based on the idea that aggression is an inherent and natural human instinct. Aggression has been explained as an instinct that is directed externally toward others in a process called displacement, and it has been noted that aggressive impulses that are not channeled toward a specific person or group may be expressed indirectly through socially acceptable activities such as sports and competition is a process called catharsis. Biological, or instinctive, theories of aggression have also been put forth by ethnologists, who study the behavior of animals in their natural environments. A number of ethnologists have, based upon their observations of animals, supported the view that aggression is an innate instinct common to humans.
Two different schools of thought exist among those who view aggression as instinct. One group holds the view that aggression can build up spontaneously, with or without outside provocation, and violent behavior will thus result, perhaps as a result of little or no provocation. Another suggest that aggression is indeed an instinctive response but that, rather than occurring spontaneously and without provocation, it is direct response to provocation from an outside source....