When April 20, 1999 came about, students at Columbine High School were shocked when the students they were classmates with, suddenly entered the school with weapons. They killed teachers and students with no fear before they finally turned their weapons to themselves, taking their own lives. Another case in the early 90's involved Timothy McVeigh taking his ruthless intent out on the Oklahoma City Federal Building killing over 200 people.
What makes people suddenly just lash out and take their aggression out on other people? Why do people develop such aggressive behaviors? To better understand how a relatively normal person gets so aggressed, we have to develop a theory on what causes aggression. I will try to hypothesize how biological factors, frustration, crowding, and averse events affect a person's personality in the cause of aggression. I will be using aggression as the independent variable and biological, frustration, crowding, and adverse events as the dependent variable.
Biological Factors.
The first psychologist to study the cause of aggression was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He believed that a person has an instinct for aggressions that can either be directed inward (depression or suicide), or directed outward (cause of the Columbine School murders). The instinct theory was the earliest explanation early psychologist could explain for aggression, stating that humans are genetically preprogrammed for such behavior. Freud also claimed that all humans inherit aggressiveness from their birth, and when it is combined with the sexual drive, add to a person's personality development and behavior. (Theories of Aggression,n.d.).
Austrian ethnologist and Nobel Prize winner, Konrad Lorenz claimed that an innate inherited fighting instinct, same as in humans as it is in animals. He argued that the suppression of aggressive instincts of humans and animals allow instincts to build up to the point where they eventually will be released in explosive violence.
