Institutional and Media Influences on Aggression

Institutional aggression is violent behaviour that occurs within the setting of an institution such as a prison. Prisons hold high rates of violence, from assaults on other inmates to attacks on staff, and psychologists ask a single sharp question about it: does the violence come from the people inside, or from the place itself?

That question splits into two competing explanations you must be able to contrast:

Explanation	Type	Where the aggression comes from
Importation model	Dispositional	The individual prisoner and what they bring in from outside
Deprivation model	Situational	The stressful prison environment itself

The whole topic turns on this dispositional-versus-situational divide. A dispositional explanation locates the cause inside the person; a situational explanation locates it in the environment. Keep that distinction fixed in your mind, because the most common exam error is to swap the two models over.

Dispositional means "from the disposition of the individual". Situational means "from the situation the person is placed in". The importation model is dispositional; the deprivation model is situational.

The importation model, proposed by Irwin and Cressey, argues that prison violence is caused by the characteristics prisoners import — bring in — from the outside world. Prisoners are not blank slates who become aggressive because of prison; they arrive already carrying violent traits, values, beliefs and, crucially, gang affiliations.

On this view, a prison is simply a place where a lot of aggressive people are concentrated together. The aggression is a property of the individuals, not the institution:

• Prisoners bring pre-existing personality traits such as impulsivity and a history of violence.
• They import the norms and values of a criminal subculture from outside.
• They carry gang membership into the prison, and gang rivalries then play out inside.

Key claim: aggression is imported into the institution by the inmates. Change the environment and the violence would still occur, because the cause travels with the person.

Because the cause sits with the individual, the model predicts that inmates with more violent backgrounds and stronger gang ties will be the most aggressive, regardless of which prison they are held in.

The deprivation model, associated with Sykes, argues the opposite: aggression is caused by the stressful prison environment itself. Sykes described the pains of imprisonment — the specific deprivations that make prison psychologically punishing. The stress these create builds up and is released as aggression.

The five deprivations you should be able to name are:

Deprivation	What the prisoner loses
Liberty	Freedom of movement; confinement to the institution
Autonomy	Control over their own choices and daily life
Goods and services	Material possessions and comforts of ordinary life
Heterosexual relationships	Intimate and sexual relationships
Security	Safety; fear of violence from other inmates

On this account, the same person would behave very differently in a harsher versus a more humane regime. Overcrowding, poor conditions, a lack of meaningful activity and unpredictable staff all raise the stress and therefore the violence.

The deprivation model predicts that improving prison conditions — reducing the pains of imprisonment — should reduce institutional aggression, because the cause lies in the situation, not the person.

The second half of this topic asks whether media, and especially violent computer games, increase aggression. Evidence comes from three research designs, each with a different strength:

Study type	What it does	What it can show
Experimental	Manipulates media exposure, measures aggression after	Cause and effect, but usually short-term
Correlational	Measures media use and aggression, looks for a link	Association only, not cause
Longitudinal	Follows the same people over months or years	How links develop over time

A frequently cited experiment is Bartholow and Anderson, who found that participants who played a violent computer game subsequently behaved more aggressively — delivering more intense punishments to another person — than those who played a non-violent game.

Experimental designs are the only ones that can establish that media violence causes aggression, because the researcher controls the exposure. Correlational and longitudinal studies find links but cannot rule out other causes.

This evidence sets up the key mechanistic question: how might media violence translate into real aggression? Psychologists identify three routes.

The specification requires you to explain three distinct mechanisms by which media violence could increase aggression. Students routinely muddle them, so learn each one by the exact process it describes.

Mechanism	What it does	Everyday version
Desensitisation	Repeated exposure reduces the normal emotional and physiological response to violence	Violence stops shocking you; you feel less anxious about it
Disinhibition	Media showing aggression as normal, justified or rewarded weakens the usual social restraints against it	The "brakes" that normally stop aggression are released
Cognitive priming	Violent media stores aggressive scripts in memory that environmental cues later activate	A cue triggers a ready-made "template" for reacting aggressively

Desensitisation works on your feelings: after enough exposure, violence no longer produces the anxiety and arousal it once did, so people become more accepting of it and less inhibited about using it.

Disinhibition works on your social rules: normally, learned restraints tell us aggression is unacceptable. When media repeatedly portrays violence as legitimate or rewarded, those restraints are loosened and aggression seems more acceptable.

Cognitive priming works on your memory: Huesmann argued that violent media provides aggressive scripts — stored ways of behaving. A cue in the environment that resembles the media then primes (activates) the script, making an aggressive response more likely.

One reliable way to keep them straight: desensitisation changes how you feel, disinhibition changes what you think is allowed, and cognitive priming changes what you do when a cue appears.

A top-band answer weighs the evidence rather than just describing the explanations. Develop three or four points like these.

Institutional aggression — support for both models points to an interactionist account. There is evidence for importation (gang membership predicts violence, and inmates with violent histories are more aggressive) and for deprivation (harsher, more depriving regimes raise violence rates). Because both sets of findings hold up, treating the models as rivals is probably a mistake. The best explanation is likely interactionist: dispositional and situational factors combine, with imported traits expressed more readily in a depriving environment.

Media effects — experimental evidence shows causation but is artificial. Lab studies like Bartholow and Anderson can demonstrate cause because exposure is controlled, but the "aggression" measured — such as blasts of noise or button presses — is not real-world violence. The effects are also usually short-term, so they may not tell us much about lasting aggression.

Correlational and longitudinal evidence cannot establish cause. A link between violent gaming and aggression could arise because an already-aggressive person chooses violent games, rather than the games causing the aggression. Effect sizes in this research tend to be small, and there may be publication bias towards studies that report positive findings, which would inflate the apparent effect.

The media explanation risks oversimplifying. Aggression has many contributing factors — neural, hormonal, genetic and social. Presenting media as a single dominant cause is an oversimplified account. It remains useful for policy, but should be treated as one influence among several rather than the explanation.

Strong evaluation names the specific limitation (artificiality, no causation, small effect size) and explains why it matters for the conclusion, rather than just labelling a study "unrealistic".

1. Swapping the importation and deprivation models

The importation model is dispositional — aggression comes from the person and what they bring in from outside. The deprivation model is situational — aggression comes from the environment and the pains of imprisonment. Mixing these up is the single most costly error in this topic.

2. Muddling the three media mechanisms

Keep them separate: desensitisation reduces the emotional response to violence, disinhibition removes the social restraints against it, and cognitive priming activates aggressive scripts triggered by cues. Answers that blur these lose the marks for explaining the mechanisms distinctly.

3. Treating correlational studies as proof of cause

A correlation between violent gaming and aggression shows an association, not that games cause aggression. An already-aggressive person may simply prefer violent games. Only controlled experiments support causal claims, and even they are limited to short-term, artificial measures.

4. Only describing when the question wants evaluation

For a 16-mark essay, description of the models or mechanisms is AO1. Marks in the higher bands come from AO3: naming a specific weakness (artificiality, small effect sizes, publication bias) and explaining its consequence for the conclusion.

5. Naming the pains of imprisonment without linking them to aggression

Listing the five deprivations (liberty, autonomy, goods and services, heterosexual relationships, security) is not enough. You must state that these deprivations create stress, and that this stress is what is released as aggression.