AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR

Volume 11, pages 217-222

Taxonomies of Aggressive Behavior:

A Preliminary Report
Anne Campbell, Steven Muncer, and Daniel Bibel
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (A.C., D.8.);Nassau Community College,
Garden City, New York, and Columbia University, New York City (S.M.)
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It has been widely and regularly suggested that aggression is not a unitary concept but
rather an omnibus term concealing important and distinct subclasses of behavior.
Psychologists have offered various categorical schemes hwlighting motivation and
fonn as distinguishing criteria. Many writers have also noted the social relativity of
d e f ~ t i o n sof c k e s of aggression and called for a consideration of lay conceptions of
aggressive behavior. The present paper explores the correspondence between psychol-
ogists’and laypersons’ categorizations of aggressive acts. Ten short scenarios of aggres-
sion were generated to embody systematic permutations of form and motive as suggested
by the published work of social psychologists. Subjects rated every pairwise combina-
tion in terms of perceived similarity. The data were subjected to three-factor, multidi-
mensional scaling. The resulting structure indicated that subjects’ ratings were not
random and reflected consideration of motive (hostile, normative, instrumental, status)
and of direct versus indirect form. The data were thus in close correspondence with
the classifications generated by psychologists. The desirability of refming this technique
and extending it to other cultural and subcultural groups is discussed.
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Key words: aggression, cognition, taxonomies
INTRODUCTION
The apparent heterogeneity of acts which are encompassed under the rubric of
aggressive behavior has prompted many writers to suggest important distinctions that
may be used individually or in tandem to subdivide acts into subsets sharing common
properties. The aim of such a classification is to increase homogeneity and thereby
expedite attempts to predict by locating important social and psychological precursors
of such acts. However, the distinctions that have been offered appear to be based
upon the predilections of the particular writer’s theoretical position or upon untested
“commonsense” assumptions [Toch, 19781. In order to avoid the imposition of
categorical schemas foreign to the cognitive conceptualizations of laypeople, some
writers have suggested that such lay conceptualizations be taken into account [Ban-
dura, 1973; Harre and Secord, 1973; Kelly, 1955; Moscovici, 19631. Such a position
argues for the varying social significance of different forms of aggressive behavior

Received October 18, 1983; accepted November 20, 1984.

Address reprint requests to Dr. Anne Campbell, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 15
Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102.

0 1985 Alan R. Liss, Inc.

218 Campbell, Muncer, and Bibel

and presupposes that an understanding of this significance is crucial to an actor’s

motivation.
Psychologists have distinguished between aggressive acts principally on the basis
of motivation and form. Motivational taxonomies include: hostile versus instrumental
[Feshbach, 1964; Rule, 19741, normative versus expressive [Wolfgang and Ferracuti,
1967; Berkowitz, 19781, status enhancer versus status defender [Toch, 19691, pro-
voked versus unprovoked [ZiIlman, 19791, and offensive versus defensive [Zillman,
19791. Form taxonomies include direct versus indirect puss, 19611, verbal versus
physical [Buss, 19611, active versus passive [Buss, 19611, planned versus unplanned
[Schott, 19711, fantasy versus reality [Schott, 19711, and self as target versus other as
target [Schott, 19711.
The technique used in the study required subjects to consider all pairwise combi-
nations of scenarios generated to embody psychologists’ distinctions. Had all 11
bipolar constructs been employed, it would have resulted in several thousand paired
comparisons. It was decided therefore to reduce the above list to those schema which
have received the most currency and given rise to the most heated debate.
Instances of hostile aggression refer to situations in which the actor’s behavior is
governed chiefly by anticipation of the action’s injurious outcomes: the main aim is
to harm or injure [see Berkowitz, 1978; Toch, 19781. Instrumental aggression refers
to situations in which the main goal is material profit, and injury or harm is a means
to that end [see Bandura, 1973; Zillman, 19791. Normative aggression defines acts
which are motivated principally by a desire to adhere to local normative requirements
which demand aggression as a prescribed response to interpersonal integrity attacks
[see Clinard, 1974; Gibbons, 1973; Miller, 1958; Schur, 1969; Wolfgang, 19591.
Status-enhancing aggression is motivated by a desire to achieve prestige or respect
from peers through acts of physical or verbal prowess [Short, 1974; Toch, 19691.
Buss [ 19611 suggested that form of aggression could provide a powerful taxonomy of
aggressive action. He distinguished between verbal and physical modes and between
direct aggression (where the aggrieved party takes positive action) and indirect
aggression (where a third party acts on his behalf) [see Baron, 1977; Buss, 1961;
Zillman, 19791.
Recent work in the area of situational analysis [e.g., Forgas, 1976; Jones and
Young, 1973; Wish, 19751 has capitalized on the technique of multidimensional
scaling (MDS) to analyze aggregate social perceptions. This technique uses distance
measures between social situations, as rated by subjects, as raw data from which to
construct an n-dimensional solution to the matrices, in which the social stimuli may
be mapped. However, in a previous attempt to use MDS to investigate the perception
of aggressive episodes, subjects have been provided with a series of experimenter-
generated rating scales. Forgas, Brown, and Menyhart [1980] asked subjects to rate
scenarios on 12 bipolar scales, which were constructed to embody dimensions com-
monly thought by psychologists to be important. By providing such scales, the
experimenter “cues” the subjects as to the dimensions of importance, and the resulting
solution reveals very little about the layperson’s implicit cognitive dimensions. This
problem is avoided in the present study. Paired stimuli are presented, and the subject’s
task is to rate their similarity on an eight-point scale from “Almost identical to each
other” to “Almost opposite to each other.” The subject must employ his own con-
ceptual dimensions in arriving at a measure of their similarity.
This study therefore employs MDS as a means of examining the hypothesis that
there is substantial agreement between psychologists and laypeople in their classifi-
 Aggressive Taronomies 219

cations of aggression. If the mapping of the subjects’ similarity judgments of stimuli

shows a random spatial configuration, it may be concluded that psychologists’ distinc-
tions are not relevant to lay conceptualizations. This is not to say that lay conceptual-
izations lack structure or unanimity (which would be indicated by a small amount of
variance explained) but that the dimensions on which the stimuli cluster as similarly
perceived are not those employed by psychologists.

METHOD

Stimulus Sampling
It was decided to employ scenarios derived from interactions of motive and form
discussed above. Four levels of form were considered (direct-physical, direct-verbal,
indirect-physical, indirect-verbal) in interaction with four motivations (hostile, instru-
mental, normative, status), resulting in 16 possible scenario types. Four of these were
rejected as being both theoretically inconsistent and socially improbable; hostile and
normative aggression require direct confrontation with the target, and thus indirect
form conditions could not apply. In order to balance the design and limit the number
of possible scenarios to be used, the final design employed 10 stimuli, as follows:
1. Direct physical hostile (two scenarios)
2. Direct physical normative
3. Direct verbal hostile
4. Direct verbal normative
5. Indirect physical instrumental (two scenarios)
6. Indirect physical status
7. Indirect verbal instrumental
8. Indirect verbal status
In all scenarios the following factors were held constant: 1) sex of social actors
(male); 2) location of interaction (public place); and 3) extent of injury (in all cases
whether physical or verbal, subjects were told that the victim required three days to
recover from the physical or emotional damage inflicted). The following is an
example of the scenario representing the direct physical normative condition:

George and his wife had gone out for a drink with some friends and they
were all walking home. He stopped in at a store to buy some cigarettes
and when he came out a drunk guy was trying to give his wife money if
she would go home with him. The atmosphere was tense and his friends
looked at him, waiting for him to do something. His wife was in tears.
Georgejumped on the guy and beat him up. It took the guy three days to
get over the injuries.

Subjects
The subjects of the study were 23 college freshmen taking their first course in psy-
chology. The sample was composed of 14 males and 9 females. The research instru-
ment was completed over two sessions given three weeks apart.
Procedure
All pairwise comparisons of the 10 scenarios, totalling 45 stimuli pairs, were
220 Campbell, Muncer, and Bibel

presented. Each pair was given on a separate sheet of the test booklet together with
an eight-point rating scale whose extreme poles were labeled “Almost identical to
each other” and “Almost opposite to each other.” The instructions were to read each
pair and indicate their similarity or dissimilarity on the scale below. The order of
presentation of stimuli pairs was randomized between subjects.

RESULTS
Data for each subject were coded into a half-diagonal matrix showing the perceived
similarity of every pair. The data matrices for males and females separately were
subjected to three-way, nonmetric multidimensional scaling using the ALSCAL pro-
gram [Young and Lewyckj, 19791. Two- and three-dimensional solutions were ex-
amined, although a two-dimensional solution was selected due to the restricted
number of stimuli and the greater interpretability of the solution. The results are
shown in Figure 1.
The two-dimensional solution for the 14 male subjects accounted for 84.9%of the
variance and yielded an acceptable stress value of .16. It is clear from Figure 1 that
male subjects’ similarity ratings can best be depicted by taking into account two
variables: direct versus indirect form and motivation. Dimension II divides direct
from indirect forms of aggression with the exception of only one condition (indirect
physical instrumental). The four quadrants resulting from the first two dimensions
correspond to the four motives for the aggressive act, once again with the exception
of only one scenario-the same one that failed to be accounted for by the direct versus
indirect dimension.

I.
D.P. HOSTILE 0

D.V. HOSTILE 0
0 I.P. STATUS
D.P. HOSTILE 0
D.V. NORMATIVE 0
D.P. HOSTILE 0 D.P. NORMATIVE 0
D.V. HOSTILE 0 0 I.P. INSTRUMENTAL

0 D.P. NORMATIVE
I.P. INSTRUMENTAL 0 0 D . V . NORMATIVE

I.V. STATUS 0 II.

I.V. INSTRUMENTAL 0
0 I.V. INSTRUMENTAL
I.V. STATUS 0
I.P. INSTRUMENTAL 0
0 I.P. STATUS I.P. INSTRUMENTAL 0
0 D.P. HOSTILE

Ostimulus position for males 0 stimulus position for females

Fig. 1. Two-dimensional solution for male and female subjects.

 Aggressive Taronomies 221

The female solution is also presented in Figure 1. This two-dimensional solution

accounted for 90.4% of the variance, with a stress value of .13.The structure is very
similar to that of the males with the exception of three items. The importance of these
sex differences should not be exaggerated, however, when we consider that 7 out of
10 of the female stimulus positions and 9 out of 10 of the males’ solutions can be
predicted by recourse to two variables-direct versus indirect form and motive.
Assuming the probability of a given scenario being distributed in the appropriate
quadrant by chance alone to be .25, the results for males (p < .oooO3) and for
females (p < .003)are both highly significant on a binomial test.
The verbal physical distinction did not appear to be a salient factor in subjects’
ratings of similarity, on either the two- or three-dimensional solutions. Subjects did
not appear to find the distinction between bodily and psychological harm important
when the duration of both were held constant.

DISCUSSION
In evaluating the results of the study it is important to bear in mind the nature of
the task facing the subjects. Subjects were totally naive as to the purpose of the study,
had no knowledge of the existence of the typologies being used, and received what
appeared to be a heterogeneous collection of scenarios whose similarity they were to
determine with respect to any dimensions they chose. The clarity of the multidimen-
sional solution was therefore surprising. Subjects classified the scenarios by consid-
ering the four motives and also the direct or indirect form of aggression.
The present results must be considered as encouraging from the perspective of
researcher-generated classifications of aggressive behavior. These distinctions are
clearly shared by the population studied. The grouping of scenarios into the four
classes of motive indicates that this population distinguishes the same motivations for
aggressive behavior as do academics. The debate as to whether normative and hostile
aggression should be considered as distinct is answered by these preliminary data [see
Berkowitz, 1978; Toch, 19781. Similarly, status-acquiring aggression [Toch, 19691
and normative aggression [Wolfgang and Ferracuti, 19671, both of which are argued
to be prevalent in lower-class urban culture, are clearly distinguished as separate
motivations.
Forgas, Brown, and Menyhart [1980] have shown that subjects are able to use
psychologists’ dimensions, in the form of bipolar scales, to classify naturally occur-
ring aggressive episodes. The present study suggests that these dimensions are
spontaneously utilized without previous cueing in the form of bipolar scales. Any
future study should try to combine both techniques-that is, subjects should be asked
to compare naturally occurring aggressive episodes in order to derive the subjects’
taxonomies. The size of the task for the subject would be prohibitive, however,
without the use of a multidimensional sorting technique [Takane, 19811. The present
technique could also be replicated on other populations both within and between
cultures to investigate the generality of these results. Prison inmates [Toch, 1969) and
others involved in the subculture of violence Wolfgang and Ferracuti, 19671 would
be of particular interest. Nevertheless, the present results suggest that an empirical
typology derived from the layperson would not be significantly different from psy-
chologist-generated taxonomies.
222 Campbell, Muncer, and Bibel
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