Aggression

Aggression is defined as

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• The act of initiating hostilities or invasion.
• The practice or habit of launching attacks.
• Hostile or destructive behavior or actions.

In psychology, aggression encompasses many different types of behaviour, some of which are not clearly related to each other. Consequently, aggression has been a difficult term to provide one concise definition for.

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Moyer (1986) presented an early, and highly influential, classification of seven different forms of aggression.

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• Predatory aggression: attack of prey by a predator
• Inter-male aggression: competition between males of the same species over access to females, dominance status etc.
• Fear-induced aggression: aggression associated with attempts to flee from a threat
• Irritable aggression: aggression directed towards an available target induced by some sort of frustration (eg schedule-induced aggression)
• Territorial aggression: defence of a fixed space against intruders, typically conspecifics.
• Maternal aggression: a female's aggression to protect her offspring from a threat
• Instrumental aggression: aggression directed towards obtaining some goal, maybe a learned response to a situation
 
Aggression: Genetic ►