Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Is aggression a learned behavior?
Some scholars believe that behaviors like aggression may be partially learned by watching and imitating people's behavior, while other researchers have concluded that the media may have some small effects on aggression.[133] There is also research questioning this view.[134] For instance, a long-term outcome study of youth found no long-term relationship between playing violent video games and youth violence or bullying.[135] One study suggested there is a smaller effect of violent video games on aggression than has been found with television violence on aggression. This effect is positively associated with type of game violence and negatively associated to time spent playing the games.[136] The author concluded that insufficient evidence exists to link video game violence with aggression. However, another study suggested links to aggressive behavior.[137]
His research with Walters led to his first book, "Adolescent Aggression" in 1959, and to a subsequent book, "Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis" in 1973. During a period dominated by behaviorism in the mold of B.F. Skinner, Bandura believed the sole behavioral modifiers of reward and punishment in classical and operant conditioning were inadequate as a framework, and that many human behaviors were learned from other humans. Bandura began to analyze means of treating unduly aggressive children by identifying sources of violence in their lives. Initial research in the area had begun in the 1940s under Neal Miller and John Dollard; his continued work in this line eventually culminated in the Bobo doll experiment, and in 1977's hugely influential treatise, "Social Learning Theory". Many of his innovations came from his focus on empirical investigation and reproducible investigation, which were alien to a field of psychology dominated by the theories of Freud.
Aggression in cattle is usually a result of fear, learning, and hormonal state, however, many other factors can contribute to aggressive behaviors in cattle.
The next theory that may contribute to antisocial behavior is between genetic predisposition and social learning experiences. Aggression is seen more in the evolutionary aspect. An example being, males are more aggressive than females and are involved in triple the amount of crime. Aggression has been present in males for centuries due to male dependence on dominance to compete for mates and pass genes to further generations. Most individuals are born with temperaments, impulsive tendencies, and other characteristics that relate to a delinquent. Although predisposed aspects have a great effect on the adolescent's behavior, if the child grows up in a dysfunctional family and receive poor parenting or is involved in an abusive environment that will increase the chances immensely for antisocial behaviors to appear.
Bandura was initially influenced by Robert Sears' work on familial antecedents of social behavior and identificatory learning. He directed his initial research to the role of social modeling in human motivation, thought, and action. In collaboration with Richard Walters, his first doctoral student, he engaged in studies of social learning and aggression. Their joint efforts illustrated the critical role of modeling in human behavior and led to a program of research into the determinants and mechanisms of observational learning.
Media has also been shown to have an impact on promoting different types of social behavior, such as prosocial and aggressive behavior. For example, violence shown through the media has been seen to lead to more aggressive behavior in its viewers. Research has also been done investigating how media portraying positive social acts, prosocial behavior, could lead to more helping behavior in its viewers. The general learning model was established to study how this process of translating media into behavior works, and why. This model suggests a link between positive media with prosocial behavior and violent media with aggressive behavior, and posits that this is mediated by the characteristics of the individual watching along with the situation they are in. This model also presents the notion that when one is exposed to the same type of media for long periods of time, this could even lead to changes within their personality traits, as they are forming different sets of knowledge and may be behaving accordingly.
Another source characterizes passive-aggressive behavior as: "a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and characterized by passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to complying with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. Behaviors: learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible". Other examples of passive-aggressive behavior might include avoiding direct or clear communication, evading problems, fear of intimacy or competition, making excuses, blaming others, obstructionism, "playing the victim", feigning compliance with requests, sarcasm, backhanded compliments, and hiding anger.
However, Stephen Jay Gould and others have argued that as one ascends the evolutionary hierarchy, competitiveness (the survival instinct) becomes less innate, and more a learned behavior. The same could be said for co-operation: in humans, at least, both co-operation and competition are considered learned behaviors, because the human species learns to adapt to environmental pressures. Consequently, if survival requires competitive behaviors, the individual will compete, and if survival requires co-operative behaviors, the individual will co-operate. In the case of humans, therefore, aggressiveness may be an innate characteristic, but a person need not be competitive at the same time, for instance when scaling a cliff. On the other hand, humans seem also to have a nurturing instinct, to protect newborns and the weak. While that does not necessitate co-operative behavior, it does help.
In 1964, Leonard Berkowitz stated that it is necessary to have an aggression stimulus to make aggression take place. Then in 1974 and 1993, he remodified the frustration/aggression hypothesis into a theory that removed the importance of aggressive cues to the aggressive behavior. Which is to say, extremely angry subject will show aggression even if the aggression cue is absent. The most provocative theory introduced by Berkowitz is “aggressive cues” hypothesis, stating that for young children, previous exposure to any objects or events such as military weapon toys showing destruction effects will work as aggressive cues to increase the chances of aggression behaviors. The modification of frustration/aggression hypothesis by Berkowitz discussed that the aggressive behavior originates from internal forces such as anger, aggressive habits and external stimuli.These theories help explain the reasons why aggression is evoked but didn’t explain well the procedure of aggressive habits developments into aggressive stimuli.[22]
Social Learning Theory has been used to explain the emergence and maintenance of deviant behavior, especially aggression. Criminologists Ronald Akers and Robert Burgess integrated the principles of Social Learning Theory and operant conditioning with Edwin Sutherland's Differential Association Theory to create a comprehensive theory of criminal behavior. Burgess and Akers emphasized that criminal behavior is learned in both social and nonsocial situations through combinations of direct reinforcement, vicarious reinforcement, explicit instruction, and observation. Both the probability of being exposed to certain behaviors and the nature of the reinforcement are dependent on group norms.
Preschoolers living with violence internalize the learned gender roles associated with victimization, for instance seeing males as perpetrators and females as victims. This symptom presents itself as the preschooler imitating learned behaviors of intimidation and abuse. The preschooler may present with aggressive behavior, lashing out, defensive behavior, or extreme separation anxiety from the primary caregiver.
When social ants encounter ants from another colony, behavior can be either aggressive or non-aggressive. Aggressive behavior is very commonly seen; the attacking worker usually bites the opponent at the petiole. In non-aggressive behavior, antennation occurs when the two ants meet. In the case of "Monomorium pharaonis", behavior is almost always non-aggressive even when the ants are from different colonies and of different castes. Very few cases exist where aggressive behavior is seen in these ants.
Albert Bandura advanced the social learning theory by including the individual and the environment in the process of learning and imitating behaviour. In other words, children and adults learn or change behaviours by imitating behaviours observed in others. Albert Bandura mentions that the environment plays an important role as it is the stimuli that triggers the learning process. For example, according to Bandura (1978), people learn aggressive behaviour through 3 sources: Family members, community and mass media. Research shows that parent who prefer aggressive solution to solve their problems tend to have children who use aggressive tactics to deal with other people. Research also found that communities in which fighting prowess are valued have a higher rate of aggressive behaviour. Also, findings show that watching televisions can have at least 4 different effect on people: 1) it teaches aggressive style of conduct, 2) it alters restraints over aggressive behavior,3) it desensitizes and habituate people to violence and 4) it shapes people’s image of reality. The environment also allows people to learn through another person’s experience. For example, students don’t cheat on exams (at least no openly) because they know the consequences of it, even if they never experienced the consequences themselves
Each dog was trained to respond to a set of 15 commands taken from the AKC standard for CDX obedience. The commands were selected to provide control over the dog, and included "heel", "stand" "go", "come", "hold", "drop" and "sit". These behaviors were termed "safety behaviors". Training was divided into 9 stages, each of which was composed of 5-20 twice daily training sessions. Dogs could only progress to the next stage after passing a test. On average, dogs took 10-15 sessions to complete each stage. After training basic commands, the dogs were trained to perform the behaviors they had already learned in order to avoid progressively increasing electric shock. After that, they were conditioned to perform a safety behavior in order to avoid a "safety tone" that allowed them to anticipate the shock. In the later stages of training, dogs were exposed to provocation by a distractor dog, and were punished using full intensity shock if they failed to perform a safety behavior or if they showed aggression. After training was complete, and the dogs were choosing to perform the safety behaviors instead of aggression, owners were taught to use the shock collar and the training was transferred into everyday situations. The training resulted in a long-lasting and complete suppression of aggressive behaviour in the dogs. Dogs were followed up 3 years after the end of training, and the reduction in aggression were maintained.
The parental use of verbal aggressiveness can cause a disruption in the relationship between the child and the parent. When a parent uses verbally aggressive behavior children are often frightened, which leads to avoidance of the parent. The verbal aggressiveness causes the child to feel fear and anxiety and therefore the child loses trust in their relationship. Parental verbal aggressiveness has a negative correlation with relational satisfaction and closeness to their children. Studies found that parents who are verbally aggressive tend to have children who are also verbally aggressive. This is proven through Bandura's social learning theory. Children who are consistently around their parents are likely to model their behavior.
Albert Bandura, who is known for the classic Bobo doll experiment, identified this basic form of learning in 1961. The importance of observational learning lies in helping individuals, especially children, acquire new responses by observing others' behavior. Albert Bandura states that people’s behavior could be determined by their environment. Observational learning occurs through observing negative and positive behaviors. Bandura believes in reciprocal determinism in which the environment can influence people’s behavior and vice versa. For instance, the Bobo doll experiment shows that model, in a determined environment, affects children’s behavior. In this experiment Bandura demonstrates that one group of children placed in an aggressive environment would act the same way, while the control group and the other group of children placed in a passive role model environment hardly shows any type of aggression.
High levels of testosterone combined with low levels of cortisol and/or serotonin have been theorized as contributing factors. Testosterone is "associated with approach-related behavior, reward sensitivity, and fear reduction", and injecting testosterone "shift[s] the balance from punishment to reward sensitivity", decreases fearfulness, and increases "responding to angry faces". Some studies have found that high testosterone levels are associated with antisocial and aggressive behaviors, yet other research suggests that testosterone alone does not cause aggression but increases dominance-seeking. It is unclear from studies if psychopathy correlates with high testosterone levels, but a few studies have found psychopathy to be linked to low cortisol levels and reactivity. Cortisol increases withdrawal behavior and sensitivity to punishment and aversive conditioning, which are abnormally low in individuals with psychopathy and may underlie their impaired aversion learning and disinhibited behavior. High testosterone levels combined with low serotonin levels are associated with "impulsive and highly negative reactions", and may increase violent aggression when an individual is provoked or becomes frustrated. Several animal studies note the role of serotonergic functioning in impulsive aggression and antisocial behavior.
Social learning theory suggests that new behaviors can be learned by watching and imitating the behaviors of others. Patterson (1975) further expands on this and proposes that child behavior problems are “inadvertently established or maintained by dysfunctional parent-child interactions”. There can be a “coercive interaction cycle” between parent and child where both try to control the behavior of the other. Behaviors such as arguing and aggression in children are reinforced by parent behaviors (e.g., withdrawal of demands), but negative parent behaviors can subsequently be reinforced by negative child behaviors. In sum, children can learn many behaviors from their parents’ feedback, but this can result in negative externalizing behaviors, as well. The PDI component targets this cycle specifically by establishing consistent parenting behaviors that encourage the desired behavior in children. 
The International Society for Research on Aggression (abbreviated ISRA) is an international learned society dedicated to scientific research on all aspects of human aggressive behavior. It was established in August 1972 in Tokyo, Japan, by a group of academics who were there to attend the 20th Annual International Congress of Psychology. The Society was co-founded by Saul Rosenzweig and John Paul Scott, who served as its first and second president, respectively. Its official journal is "Aggressive Behavior", which is published by John Wiley & Sons. The current president of the society is Mike Potegal.
Notable past presidents of the ISRA include:
Young children preparing to enter kindergarten need to develop the socially important skill of being assertive. Examples of assertiveness include asking others for information, initiating conversation, or being able to respond to peer pressure. In contrast, some young children use aggressive behavior, such as hitting or biting, as a form of communication. Aggressive behavior can impede learning as a skill deficit, while assertive behavior can facilitate learning. However, with young children, aggressive behavior is developmentally appropriate and can lead to opportunities of building conflict resolution and communication skills. By school age, children should learn more socially appropriate forms of communicating such as expressing themselves through verbal or written language; if they have not, this behavior may signify a disability or developmental delay.
Following that study, Albert Bandura tested whether the same was true for models presented through media by constructing an experiment he called "Bobo Doll Behavior: A Study of Aggression". In this experiment Bandura exposed a group of children to a video featuring violent and aggressive actions. After the video he then placed the children in a room with a Bobo doll to see how they behaved with it. Through this experiment, Bandura discovered that children who had watched the violent video subjected the dolls to more aggressive and violent behavior, while children not exposed to the video did not. This experiment displays the social cognitive theory because it depicts how people reenact behaviors they see in the media. In this case, the children in this experiment reenacted the model of violence they directly learned from the video.
The Bobo doll experiment was a study carried out by Albert Bandura who was a professor at Stanford University. It focused on the study of aggression using three groups of preschoolers as the subjects. Bandura took inflatable plastic toys called Bobo dolls and weighted them down to always stand upright. The preschoolers were divided into three groups by gender, and then into six subgroups. One of the groups would observe an adult act aggressively towards the bobo doll, another group would observe an adult with non-aggressive behaviors, and the last group would not be exposed to any behavior models. The study found the preschoolers exposed to the aggressive behavior had imitated the aggressiveness towards the doll, regardless of gender. The other two groups showed significantly less hostility towards the doll. The study had showed aggressive and non-aggressive behaviors were learned by observing others and had a significant effect on the subjects even after the study was concluded. 
The frequency of physical aggression in humans peaks at around 2–3 years of age. It then declines gradually on average.[140][141] These observations suggest that physical aggression is not only a learned behavior but that development provides opportunities for the learning and biological development of self-regulation. However, a small subset of children fail to acquire all the necessary self-regulatory abilities and tend to show atypical levels of physical aggression across development. These may be at risk for later violent behavior or, conversely, lack of aggression that may be considered necessary within society. Some findings suggest that early aggression does not necessarily lead to aggression later on, however, although the course through early childhood is an important predictor of outcomes in middle childhood. In addition, physical aggression that continues is likely occurring in the context of family adversity, including socioeconomic factors. Moreover, 'opposition' and 'status violations' in childhood appear to be more strongly linked to social problems in adulthood than simply aggressive antisocial behavior.[142][143] Social learning through interactions in early childhood has been seen as a building block for levels of aggression which play a crucial role in the development of peer relationships in middle childhood.[144] Overall, an interplay of biological, social and environmental factors can be considered.[145]
After the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s resulted in the discharge of large numbers of people from mental health and other institutions into local communities, Arnold P. Goldstein developed Structured Learning Therapy, the precursor to Skillstreaming, as a practical method of behavioral training. Structured learning methods deal with aggression, withdrawal, and other nonproductive actions as learned behaviors that can be changed by teaching new, alternative skills.
Theories of negative effects of video games tend to focus on players' modeling of behaviors observed in the game. These effects may be exacerbated due to the interactive nature of these games. The most well known theory of such effects is the General Aggression Model (GAM), which proposes that playing violent video games may create cognitive scripts of aggression which will be activated in incidents in which individuals think others are acting with hostility. Playing violent video games, thus, becomes an opportunity to rehearse acts of aggression, which then become more common in real life. The "general aggression model" suggests the simulated violence of video games may influence a player's thoughts, feelings and physical arousal, affecting individuals' interpretation of others' behavior and increasing their own aggressive behavior. Some scholars have criticized the general aggression model, arguing that the model wrongly assumes that aggression is primarily learned and that the brain does not distinguish reality from fiction. Some recent studies have explicitly claimed to find evidence against the GAM.