Although aggressive behavior and its consequences has been a topic of concern for centuries, it is only within the recent past that serious attempts to understand aggression have been made. Within the last decade concern has expanded at a very high rate, perhaps impelled by an increase in aggression or the implication of an increase by frequent media reports of aggressive behavior. This apparent increased concern is matched by an increase in research. This volume brings together for the first time the diverse research strategies that reflect current major approaches to understanding the psychology of aggression. It deals with both basic laboratory research and the implications of such research for clinical work. Each chapter is designed to provide a databased analysis of aggressive behavior and an explanation of the research tactics used to obtain such data.Included in the book are a review of physiological variables in aggression; an assessment of neonatal variables in a developmental analysis of aggression; an examination of genetics and aggression; research on the Pain-Aggression hypothesis in human and non-human subjects; and an exposition of a social learning model of aggression. Theses analyses are significantly amplified by a moment-by-moment sequential analysis of the behavior of aggressive children, and by an examination of the role of semantic conditioning in the ontogeny of human aggressive repertoires. The final chapter (written by the editor) examines recurring problems in aggression research in general and considers points of consensus among the contributors to the volume. Control of Aggression will interest clinical psychologists and the full spectrum of other scientists engaged in research on the subject, including behavioral pharmacologists and biologists, geneticists, physiological and social psychologists, and sociologists.

This short volume contains papers presented at a special symposium, "The Physiology of Aggression and Defeat," during the MAS meetings in Dallas, Texas, in December, 1968. At a time when we need to understand the basic mechan isms underlying various forms of aggression, these papers report progress toward this goal. Although the many social, psychologic and economic causal mechanisms contributing to aggression have been reasonably well-understood for a number of years, the correlated physiological, biochemical, endocrinological and neurochemical changes taking place in an organism that is either the aggressor or the recipient of aggression have not been studied extensively, and the limited available data in the past have often been in con siderable conflict. These eight papers demonstrate that complex interac tions take place among the psychological, social, physio logical, biochemical, endocrinological and neurochemical factors involved in aggression and defeat. The general indications are that while the aggressor learns to survive and adapts readily to the fighting process, the vanquished, if he does not die, maintains an existence highlighted by severe and extensive changes in all physiologic and psycho logic systems. We cannot make sweeping generalizations to the human organism from the results of non-human animal experimentation. Nevertheless, it is well-known that in all animals, including the human, similar basic biochemi cal systems are involved.

No detailed description available for "Origins of Aggression".