Frustration-Aggression
John Dollard and his colleagues Leonard Doob, Neal Miller, and Robert Sears proposed frustration as the cause of aggression. The simplest and clearest formulation is that “the occurrence of aggression always presupposes the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression” (Dollard, et al.
1939). That is, frustration is both a necessary and a sufficient cause of aggression. Humans are goal-oriented, and they become hostile when blocked from reaching their goals.Within two years of publication of the theory, John Whiting (1941) reported that aggression was only one way the Kwoma of New Guinea responded to frustration, the other three being avoidance, submission, or dependence. This led the original authors to revise their phrasing to make frustration:
likely to turn to aggression… The frustration-aggression hypothesis is… intended to suggest to the student of human nature that when he sees aggression he should turn a suspicious eye on possibilities that the organism or group is confronted with frustration; and that when he views interference with individual or group habits, he should be on the look-out for, among other things, aggression. This hypothesis is induced from commonsense observation, from clinical case histories, from a few experimental investigations, from sociological studies and from the results of anthropological field work” [emphasis added] (Miller 1941).
Other researchers picked up the idea and began classifying types of frustration and incorporating additional factors such as fear, learning, and self-esteem to explain whether aggression would or would not result from frustration. Berkowitz (1978) wrote that aggression is a more general example of the relationship between unpleasant stimuli and unpleasant emotions and feelings, such as anxiety, anger, annoyance, or pain.
These trigger the choice between "fight or flight” based on how the individual assesses a situation and controls his feelings. A fight is more likely on the playground than in class and less likely in church. One is more likely to lose one’s temper with a subordinate than with a superior. People may not even direct their aggression at the source of their frustration, especially when the source is a powerful authority figure who can retaliate. People learn to accept different levels of frustration in different situations. Frustration-aggression theory soon became positively Ptolemaic in its complexity, incorporating every conceivable human response to any situation, in the end saying little more than “frustration may or may not cause a reaction of some sort.” This is not very useful.Critics also point to instances of aggression in the absence of frustration (e.g., boxing, football), but their examples seem weak unless no distinction is made between competition and aggression. More telling, frustration does not motivate mercenary or professional soldiers such as those of imperial Rome, nineteenth-century Britain, or twenty-first century America who joined the army for wide-ranging reasons. Relative Deprivation Theory does attribute revolutionary war to mass frustration but poses its own difficulties (Chapter 12).
In cases where aggression is instrumental, or purposive, the role of frustration is less clear. A simple case is the child throwing food on the floor to gain attention. Frustration-aggression theory added the complication of “displaced aggression,” such as kicking the dog when mad at the boss. Some believe, without supporting evidence and in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, that President Bush invaded Iraq out of frustration with the failure to capture Usama bin Ladin (Chapter 13). Displaced aggression makes it difficult to link a particular act of aggression to a particular frustration, and points to the most significant problem of all. Frustration is inferred from aggression, which then is used to explain the aggression. That is, the reasoning is circular, the theory a tautology.