Assess The Difference Between Responsive And Proactive Aggression

Aggression and violence are two of the major issues that society is currently plagued with, especially within the younger generation, specifically those under the age of 40. Whether from fighting between adolescents, bullying, violent video games, violence in relationships and increased violence on television; the increased violence and decreased sensitivity to it has contributed to the current condition of society. According to Kenrick, Neuberg, and Cialdini (2015) aggression is a behavior that is intended to injure another person, whether directly, indirectly, physically or emotionally (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2015). Further, one must be careful not to confuse aggression and anger; as they are different. Aggression is a behavior or action that can stem from emotion, whereas anger is strictly an emotion
Reactive aggression is often spontaneous, impulsive, and a response to action after being provoked or initiated; while proactive aggression is aggression that is premeditated and planned to obtain a wanted outcome or result( Pang, Ang, Kom, Tan, & Chiang, 2013). A group of researchers conducted a study to discover the cognitive differences between the two types of aggression in order to understand and predict the presence and/or absence of intentionality in each form of aggression (Brugman et al., 2015). The researchers found that, “heightened attentional interference for aggressive words significantly predicted more reactive aggression, while lower attentional bias towards aggressive words predicted higher levels of proactive aggression. A stronger self-aggression association resulted in more proactive aggression, but not reactive aggression” (Brugman, 2015, p. 51). This means that there are two different cognitive predictors of aggression and different variables that differentiate between proactive and reactive