According to Stark, a sampled group of males who have higher levels of testosterone tend exhibiting several groupings of anti-social behavior. As a result, this fact turns out to be a cause and effect relationship, where an individual may be caused to believe that having high levels of testosterone causes people to show signs of anti-social behavior, or become aggressive.
On the contrary, aggressive behavior is a product of conditions that are linked to sociological determinants, such as poverty and inadequate basic needs, low intellect, rejection, dysfunctional family environments, and frustration.
The social surroundings of an individual (the poverty environment) are a dominant regulator of his neurobiological behavior and processes (Stark 452). In other words, we can note that the regulation of internal and external stimuli, as a result of human beings’ inability to access basic needs, produces or inhibits aggressive behavior.
An individual’s low intellect, whether academic or social, generates too many frustrations and failures in a mixture of developmental contexts. As a result, problems in each context naturally set in motion higher-than-average levels of aggression. Consequently, this will bring about additional frustrating incidents with teachers, parents, and peers.
According to Stark, another sociological factor that determines the level of aggressiveness is rejection (457). When individuals are rejected by their peers and harsh parenting, they are inclined to exhibit hostile intentions. This situation is aggravated by limited cognitive capacities in processing these experiences. As a result, these hostile intentions are believed to be the basis for aggressive behavior, since they bring about additional problems in social interactions.
Also, they restrict non-aggressive relations that could endow individuals with opportunities to gain knowledge of pro-social behaviors. According to Stark, peer-rejected children (individuals) are subjected to elevated levels of negative relations with their peers and as a result, may respond cognitively by elevating their hope for potential negative interactions (468).
As a result, these individuals bump up their negative status and amplify their rejection; hence, they experience more difficulty in sustaining interpersonal bonds, social control, and family structure.
In a dysfunctional family environment, many youths are neglected via total lack of or inadequate positive parenting behaviors or parental supervision. In such environments, these individuals go through harsh treatment plus abuse. Accordingly, this would lead them to join deviant peer groups through which their negative behaviors patterns, including aggressiveness, may emerge, and be reinforced.
Inadequate positive parenting behaviors or parental supervision usually occur in homes that experience disruption of marriages or are single-parent families. The other sociological factor that accounts for differences in levels of aggressiveness is frustration. The frustration-aggression theory of John Dollard led to the widespread acceptance of this opinion. According to this hypothesis, aggression always originates from frustration, and frustration brings about a form of aggression.
Although frustrations may be a cause of aggressive behavior, it is not always that they would reply with aggressive words and thoughts, or deeds. Such individuals may show a wide selection of reactions that range from despair, depression, and resignation, in an attempt to triumph over the sources of that frustration (Stark 476).
Frustration influences aggressive behavior in two ways. Firstly, intense frustration tends to increase the level of aggression, while mild or moderate frustration may not enhance aggression. Secondly, frustration is likely to facilitate aggressive behavior when it is observed as illegitimate or arbitrary, more willingly than when it is perceived as legitimate or deserved.
Works Cited
Stark, Rodney. Sociology. Tenth Edition. Belmont, CA: Thomas Wadsworth, 2007. Print.