PHGY 313 Lecture Notes - Autonomic Nervous System, Ethology, Appeasement
8 Feb 2013
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Document Summary
Many factors can make a person aggressive including: childhood experiences, exposure to violence on television and in the movies, peer group pressures, hormones and drugs, and brain malfunctions. Zoologists and ethologists have studied animal behaviour and found that aggression is important for the survival of a species. Intraspecific aggression- attack by one animal on another member of its species. Animals use intraspecific aggression when it comes to mating, but it has outlived its usefulness for humans. Ethologists discovered related set of behaviours in many species: ritualized threat gesture and appeasement gestures. Studies also showed that levels of testosterone could fluctuate according to the environment and people that person is around. There"s also possibility that athletes that take steroids are more aggressive, which they are, but it"s not exactly proven because it may be that men that were originally competitive could"ve taken the steroids. When a violent child is punished by physical violence like spanking, the child tends to imitate it.
