Outline and evluate one socio-psychological explantion of aggression

One socio-psychological theory of aggression is Social learning theory. The social learning theory of aggression suggests that through vicarious learning, we observe and imitate an aggressive act that is rewarded. Normally, people would imitate an aggressive act if a role model was the one doing the action or if they are similar to us in some way (Duck). Imitation also needs the person to have the motivation, self-efficacy and positive or nor retention of past aggressive acts. The environment is also important in determining whether or not imitation will occur. In a darkened, aggressive, loud and confusing nightclub in which people have had much to drink, someone may be more prone to copying aggression. Or differently, a fearful person may be too afraid of retaliation to copy an aggressive act in an unfamiliar setting.
In Bandura’s Bobo doll study, children watched an adult act aggressively towards the Bobo doll. They then either saw the adult get rewarded, punished, or neither. The children were then let out to play with the Bobo doll. The condition in which the children watched the adult get rewarded displayed the greatest aggressive acts. However the other two conditions displayed no aggressive acts. This shows that imitation only occurs when children have a positive, rewarded mental representation of aggressive behaviour. A weakness with the Bobo doll study is that it does not could for individual differences. Children may have naturally been more aggressive in one condition rather than the other. Being children, social learning theory is hard pushed to then generalise to adults who have a much more developed and experienced representation of aggressive behaviour.

However, the study does have real life applications. The Jamie Bugler case, in which two young boys horrifically murdered a toddler, apparently supported this explanation. The boys admitted to watching Chucky and imitating the violence they saw. Although this seems to be shocking vicarious learning and was the explanation given, one psychologist found no link between SLT and the crime. Moreover, the perpetrators were deeply disturbed and therefore such a simple and natural demonstration of SLT cannot be attributed. Phillips also found that SLT has real world applications in America. After a wrestling match, homicides increased, perhaps showing imitation of the violence shown on the media. However this is merely correlational data and therefore other factors may influence homicide rates such as: team rivalry, hostile environments and Deindividuation.

Altgough championed for its universalised and cultural variations, SLT can be seen as an imposed ethic on non Western cultures. Wolfgang’s “culture of violence” study showed that according to different cultures, aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour models varied. He gave the example of the !Kung Sang men who are completely non-violent and look down upon aggressive behaviour whereas in Western society, aggressive behaviour is a sign of manliness. Therefore in some cultures, the imitation of violence is simply not there no matter the reward.

Studies into SLT are also limited, meaning that further experimentation is required to gain more detailed information. This poses an ethical problem, imitation of aggressive behaviour is not something to encourage, especially in children, and is not protecting participants from harm.

Moreover, the study is incredibly deterministic, suggesting that people will copy rewarded behaviours without giving any explanation as to how or why. In this sense, it is also reductionist, reducing complex psychological and biological behaviour into imitation. Runciman claimed an alternative to SLT, that deprivation caused aggression, as did Dollard- environmental factors were the reason for aggressive behaviour. 

Discuss research into factors influencing attitudes to food and/or eating behaviour. (24 marks)

Discuss research into factors influencing attitudes to food and/or eating behaviour. (24 marks)

Mood is one factor influencing eating behaviour. Garcia conducted a study in which 38 participants were assigned to two conditions. In the first, they watched an upbeat, comic film and in the second they watched a sad film. In both conditions, grapes and popcorn were provided as snacks. It was observed that in the sad film condition, 31% more popcorn was consumed than in the upbeat film- opting for grapes. Garcia concluded that the calorific, sweet food jolted the person into a state of euphoria, whilst those already in a good mood chose healthy snacks to prolong their good mood. There are some methodological issues surrounding this study. Firstly, popcorn is a typical cinema food which may have meant that higher quantities of it were consumed due to that association. Moreover, individual differences are likely to pose a problem- some may simply prefer popcorn. To combat this, perhaps a repeated measures design would have been more appropriate, as participants are likely not to ascertain the study because the dependent variable is not particularly out of the ordinary. Moreover, other factors may have influenced eating behaviour in the study- for example what time of day it was and people’s eating habits and timings. This may reduce the internal validity of the study. 

However, it is shown that by levelling out mood through medication, comfort eating is reduced. This has real world applications in patients suffering from bipolar- a mood disorder- who are likely to be overweight and are prescribed mood altering drugs such as lithium. Although this does support that mood does influence eating behaviour, perhaps it could only be prescribed to major mood changes and not ones we experience perhaps dozens of times a day (and we know this doesn’t influence our food behaviour). Moreover, it is culturally biased. Mood cannot be afforded to influence eating behaviour in places such as Sub Saharan Africa. Therefore it could be said to be a factor only in affluent, Western societies and not a universal attributer.

Another factor influencing attitudes to food is culture. Ball and Kennedy followed (not literally!) 14000 women in Australia and found that the more time the women spent in Australia, the more their eating habits coincided with those women who had been born there. This shows that eating attitudes and behaviours are influenced by the culture we live in and we adapt to the environment- acculturation. This research perhaps highlights but does not explain that there could be an evolutionary explanation for acculturation, it would aid the survival of those women to begin to display the same eating attitudes and behaviours and aid social cohesion. We have still retained this ability to adapt to our environment and food availability/culture. However, it is endocentric, and therefore this study cannot be generalised to men. There may be social factors involved which determines whether different genders respond to acculturation differently or whether it is universal. Moreover, in all cultures, food is subject to availability and our preferences depend on this and could be shaped by this.

Social Learning Theory in terms of eating behaviour and attitudes states that these are observed and imitated from our parents. Brown and Odgen found a correlation between the child’s motivation to eat, body dissatisfaction and snack intake and the mother’s motivation, dissatisfaction and intake. This suggests that the child has observed and imitated the mother. Birch and Fish also found that the best predictor for a child’s eating habits is the mother’s food constraint and anxiety about the child being overweight. However this is reductionist. The correlation may be down to many other things such as genetics. We know that anorexia is more likely to manifest in children with a parent who previously suffered. It also doesn’t measure or mention the father’s eating habits and what influence this has on the child’s development (especially if a family consists of a single dad and his child, for example). Therefore it has a gender bias. The media, however, is an active example of SLT and proves that it is an influencing factor - people’s attitudes on food are known to be effected by observing and copying adverts, for example, and celebrities following specific diets. 

Discuss Explanations for the Failure and success of dieting

Discuss Explanations for the Failure and success of dieting

People diet in order to achieve cultural ideals on body weight and respond to body dissatisfaction. K    found that over 89% of the female population had reduced their intake at some point in their lives to lose weight. A successful diet is supposed to constitute as losing 10% of body weight and maintaining weight loss for at least a year. One way of ensuring success in dieting is to focus on the detail of the food rather than the numbers/nutritional value and the boredom surrounding dieting foods. Reddens conducted an experiment wherein 130 people were directed into two conditions. In one conditions, they tasted jelly beans named with numbers and in the other they tasted jelly beans with a flavour as a name i.e. ‘cherry’. They then filled out a questionnaire about the task’s enjoyability. The group who were given a flavour were less bored with the task than the group given a number. This suggests that group one had focused more on the details and flavours of the food and had enjoyed it more. This can be reflected into dieting, with detail of the restricted/repetitive foods alleviating boredom that leads to the failure of dieting. This study was very reliable, variables being easily controlled in a laboratory study. A weakness with this study is that jelly beans are usually a more enjoyable food and so perhaps a longitudinal study with diet food and calorie numbers may be a more realistic, natural study away from the laboratory, controlled nature of Redden’s study. Another component for the success of dieting is support and, again, enjoyability. This has wider world implications in weight loss groups such as weightwatchers. Compared to self-help, weightwatchers was more useful and successful than self-help and also maintained a stable weight for linger, suggesting that a community-like, encouraging environment is important (Miller).

The boundary model starts to explain the failure of dieting. Herman and Polivy showed that a diets range between hunger (the drive to eat) and satiety (feeling of fullness) is much wider than those not dieting and takes more food to reach satiety. Dieters, when they often breach the satiety boundary eat until they feel full and then continue, the “what the hell” phenomenon. In dieters, essentially, they take longer to feel hungry and it takes more food to satisfy. Wardle and Beats conducted a 7 week longitudinal study in which 29 overweight women were subject to one of three conditions; a dieting condition, exercise condition or no treatment. They filled out a questionnaire on eating habits and appetite at 4 weeks and 6 weeks. Wardle and Beats found that the dieters ate more, showing that in dieting conditions, the satiety boundary is likely to be overstepped by overeating to compensate. This may mean that for those overweight, exercise is a better option than dieting. This may also be true psychologically, with the continual failure of dieting manifesting into depression in obese individuals. This study does face issues with social desirability, being about weight and eating behaviours- things many women feel ashamed or embarrassed about and may not be honest in their questionnaire. Moreover, its small sample size of obese individuals cannot be generalised to the public. This may be because, for example, they suffer from eating disorders such as binge eating which may affect their intake.

The restraint theory suggests the more you deny yourself the food you wish, it leads to dis-inhibition which makes you overeat (Herman and Mack). Soetens supported this theory, when dieters suppress foods it almost had a rebound effect and led them to think more about food. Food became more attractive. Odgken questions the theory of restraint and the overeating consequences. He uses the example of anorexia, which the restraint theory does not explain this. Those suffering from the disease continually restrict to a dangerous level and do not eat. A response to this criticism is that it is a mental illness and the anorexics have no choice but to starve. Moreover,  this is shown in the role of denial in dieting, another influencer of failure. This model shows that the more you deny yourself something, the more you think about it- called Wegner’s ironic process of mental control. Wegner asked participants to either think of a white bear or not to think of a white bear. Those who were told NOT to think of a white bear rang a bell more often, showing that being denied to think about something led to inevitable over-thinking of it. Anorexics tend to become obsessed with food whilst during continual denial, supporting this. Keys fed his participants, male Korean conscientious objectors, half of their daily intake for 12 weeks. Although they lost 25% of their body weight (more than successful for dieting), they became obsessed with food and many became binge eaters. This shows that restriction led to obsession and overeating and changed the behaviour and attitudes of an individual. However, this study is extremely unethical-being conducted 60 years ago- and cannot be replicated; at least with humans. It was also an ethnic group of Koreans, which have cultural differences to us in terms of food. Another study even found that Asians were more prone to obesity, and that Asian girls are the group most likely to suffer from bulimia (an eating disorder constituting of consuming a large amount of food and then purging). This could indicate a tendency towards lowered food control and impulsivity or a cultural tendency. This study, however, does explore eating behaviour in males, lacking in other studies surrounding failure/success of dieting and affecting generalisability.

Success or failure of dieting could have an alternative biological explanation. LPL is a calorie storing enzyme which, if you are genetically inclined to have more of, may make it easier to regain lost weight. If weight loss is occurring, the gene becomes active and starts producing more as a response.