Aggression as successful self‐control

Summary & key facts

This paper challenges the common idea that aggression only happens when self-control fails. The author reviews research showing that aggression can also come from successful self-control. The paper explains that both paths—failed self-control and successful self-control—can lead to aggression. It proposes that theories of aggression should include both possibilities, raises new research questions, and warns that self-control training might sometimes increase aggression rather than reduce it.

Key facts:

• The paper critiques the dominant view that aggression mainly starts when self-control breaks down.
• The author summarizes multiple findings showing aggression can arise even when self-control works (i.e., aggression can follow successful self-regulation).
• The article is a review that pulls together existing studies and theory rather than reporting new experimental data.
• The paper argues that theories of aggression should be changed to allow for aggression resulting from either failed or successful self-control.
• The author warns that self-control interventions could sometimes amplify aggression, and calls for caution when developing such interventions.

Abstract

Abstract A dominant narrative is that aggression starts when self‐control stops – unchecked aggressive impulses manifest in violence as self‐control fails to inhibit them. Yet this ‘low self‐control syndrome’ approach to aggression fails to accommodate numerous findings in which aggression arises from successful self‐control. I summarize these key findings while identifying how current theories of aggression can be molded to accommodate them. This balanced perspective, which allows aggression to arise from successful and unsuccessful self‐control, suggests exciting new hypotheses alongside confounding questions for aggression and self‐regulation scholars. It also supports ongoing and broader paradigm shifts away from treating self‐control as a purely adaptive and desirable psychological capacity and toward approaching self‐control interventions with greater care, as they may amplify aggression instead of reducing it, with costly consequences.

Topics

Behavioral Health and Interventions Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion Mental Health Research Topics

Categories

Applied Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Aggression Artificial intelligence Computer science Control (management) Developmental psychology Linguistics Narrative Perspective (graphical) Philosophy Psychiatry Psychological intervention Psychology Self-control Social psychology