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Essay on Aggression and Gender
Introduction
There are different reasons why a person may act aggressively towards other human beings. The person may act this way because of his culture or the way he was brought up in society. The person does not, however, act this way based on instinct alone. Aggression is a molded, learnt behavior; it is not simply there from birth. Rather than being an uncontrollable instinct, a person's behavior is something that is taught to him. For example, a newborn baby is breathing because it is an involuntary reflex. On the other hand, a father may tell his young son to beat up the school bully who is picking on him. As a result, the boy is taught to deal with the situation by using violence.
In order for an individual to display aggression, it must be driven by an instinct interacting with that person's surroundings. Instinct, as an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to act in regard to its particular manner, basically explains that people have different reactions to different stimuli. Therefore, an individual is prone to act a certain way when he is stimulated to do so from his surrounding environment (Harris, 1998).
There are gender differences in the display of aggressive behavior, although the research findings on this point are complex. Boys exhibited more aggressive behavior than girls from the age of two to 3 and continuing through life. This gender difference is furthermore found across a variety of cultures. Gender differences in aggression are not large, but are well established. Gender accounted for an average of five percent of the variance in aggression found in the combined-sex populations of the 75 studies in her sample (Eron, 1987).
The mean for males was on the average approximately a half standard deviation higher than the mean for females...................
