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Draft for the wikipage assignment:
Frustration–aggression hypothesis, otherwise known as the frustration–aggression–displacement theory, is a theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard, Neal E. Miller et al. in 1939,[1] and further developed by Miller et al. in 1941[2] and Leonard Berkowitz in 1969.[3] The theory says that aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person's efforts to attain a goal.[4] The hypothesis attempts to explain why people scapegoat.[5] It attempts to give an explanation as to the cause of violence.[6] According to Yale Group, frustration is the "condition which exists when a goal-response suffers interference," while aggression is defined as "an act whose goal-response is injury to an organism (or an organism surrogate)." The theory says that frustration causes aggression, but when the source of the frustration cannot be challenged, the aggression gets displaced onto an innocent target. For example, if a man is disrespected and humiliated at his work, but cannot respond to this for fear of losing his job, he may go home and take his anger and frustration out on his family. This theory is also used to explain riots and revolutions, which both are believed to be caused by poorer and more deprived sections of society who may express their bottled up frustration and anger through violence. [6] However, aggression is not always the response to frustration. Rather a substitute response is displayed when aggressive response is not the strongest on the hierarchy. Furthermore, this theory raises the question if aggression is innate.[7]

Sources for this part are on the original page of Frustration-aggression hypothesis.

Reformulation and Additions to the Hypothesis
In 1941, the Yale group clarified their original statement which was “that the occurrence of aggressive behavior always presuppose the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always lead to some form of aggression”. As it was, the second part of this hypothesis lead readers to think that frustration could only have frustration as a consequence, and it did not allow the possibility that other responses could arise and override the aggression response. The Yale group thus reformulated the hypothesis as following: “frustration produces instigation to a number of different types of response, one of which is aggression”. With this new formulation, the researchers left more place for the idea that aggressive impulses are not the only kinds that can emerge when an individual feels frustration. Other impulses, such as fear of punishment, can outweigh or even attenuate aggression instigations until it disappears, which would explain situations where frustration does not lead to outright aggression.

In his article published in 1941, Gregory Bateson observed the frustration-aggression hypothesis under a cultural angle. According to him, culture was implicitly involved in the hypothesis itself, as it was dealing with human behaviour, which is always formed and influenced by the environment, be it social or cultural. He stated that it is easier to fit the hypothesis in people whose culture portray life as series of neutral or frustrating events that lead to satisfying ends. This would be the case for European culture and for Iatmul culture. However, it is harder to apply the hypothesis to the Balinese culture. Indeed, Balinese children are taught to take pleasure, satisfaction, in the steps that lead to their goals, without waiting for satisfaction climaxes by completion of such goals. Following the same line of thoughts, Arthur R. Cohen considered social norms to be an important factor in whether or not aggression will be following frustration. In 1955, he published results of a study he conducted, which included 60 female students, that showed that people were less likely to demonstrate aggression when social standards were stressed. Moreover, he built on what Doob and Sears' study previously claimed, which is that demonstration of aggressive behavior will depend on the anticipation of punishment. Indeed, Cohen's result showed that people were less likely to demonstrate aggression towards the frustration agent if the latter was an authoritative figure. He also investigated Nicholas Pastore's statement that aggression was more likely to follow in a context of a arbitrary context when compared to an non-arbitrary one, and reached the same conclusions.