Agnew's General Aggression Model

Contributing Factors
It is speculated that the motive for this case is wealth and success, however, many families have similar issues and they do not kill other family members as a solution to their problems. Individuals are all different and react to life’s hurdles in an assortment of ways. Only some people react to strain through delinquency (Agnew, Brezina, Wright, & Cullen, 2002, p. 44). Agnew’s general strain theory speculates on why certain people react to strain with delinquency while others are able to avoid the same outcome. Strain fosters negative emotions and can lower constraint on an individual (p. 47), which can be increasingly influenced when positive stimuli is removed from that individuals life (p. 44). This could have happened
Michael’s personal traits and attitudes, such as the ones he had developed in the army, as well as situational factors such as growing frustration, and having incentive (not being able to afford another child) influenced his behaviour in the fight. These variables “influence cognitions (e.g., hostile thoughts), emotions (e.g., anger), and arousal, and these three routes are also thought to influence one another (e.g., hostile thoughts can lead to increase in anger)” (Pozzulo, Bennell, & Forth, 2015, p. 416). These emotions and thought processes influence the decisions people make in social circumstances and were working together as Michael had his confrontation with Liana. The internal state that Michael was in can create both automatic, impulsive actions, as well as lead to heavily controlled thoughtful actions (p. 416). In this instance he acted impulsively in the heat of the argument and stabbed his wife. Then, afterwards, his thought became heavily controlled and thoughtful as he hid the body and worked with
As well, Michael could have later deployed some neutralization techniques, a notion developed by Sykes and Matza in 1957 (Shoenberger, Heckert, & Heckert, 2012, p. 776). The theory of neutralization is based on the idea that those who commit crime maintain a strong bond to conventional society, and want to see themselves as good (Topalli, 2006, p. 475) so they must justify their behaviour in order to control the guilt and shame they develop from the crime (Shoenberger et al., 2012, p. 777). Many reports state that neutralization techniques are used preceding the crime but they can also follow deviant behaviour (Bullock, & Condry, 2013, p. 573) like it would have been in Michael’s case. The two techniques that Michael would most likely be using are denial of responsibility and possibly appealing to higher loyalties (Bullock, & Condry, 2013; Topalli, 2006; Shoenberger et al.,