Sociocognitive Determinants of Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

The present study has been carried out looking the increasing crime and violence in the society. Murder, rape, homicide, domestic violence, assault, harassment, bullying, snatching etc., are commonly seen in the surroundings on daily basis. Aggressive behavior have been considered as one of the important risk factors of such crimes and violence therefore, it is one of the more researched phenomenon of major disciplines such as psychiatry/criminology/psychology and cognitive science etc. Experts of all the disciplines have been making effort to understand and give explanation to deal with such behavior. Specially, social psychologists study aggression and consider it as a behavior directed toward other individual carried out with the proximate intent to cause harm. where, the perpetrator must believe that the behavior will harm the target, and that target is motivated to avoid that behavior. More recently socio-cognitive model of aggression have been developed and viewed aggressive behavior as results from the way in which personal and situational variables combine to influence the one’s present internal state. Empathy and Locus of Control are two of the most significant sociocognitive variables of aggressive behavior which have been reported in the literature and are incorporated in this study to see their association with aggressive behavior. Locus of control is one’s belief about the consequences of the actions in their life. Control may be either by the self(internal) and or the external circumstances including luck, faith which person believe that behavior is largely determined by. Empathy is one’s ability to perceive and understand emotions in others and take appropriate action to those emotions. Locus of Control(Levenson, 1992 Prepared by Sanjay Vohra), Interpersonal reactivity Scale(Davis, 1980) and Direct and Indirect Aggression Scale(Bjorkqvist et al., 1992) were administered on a sample of 53 emerging adults including males and females age ranges from 18 to 27 years employing incidental sampling method. The Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation anda