Full explanation of A level psychology AQA ethological explanation of aggression. A* content and evaluation. Covers all A01, A03 AO's. I achieved an A* for a level psychology. Full essay plan/ notes to help answer smaller questions and larger 16 markers.
- Investigated this behaviour using models crafted to resemble male sticklebacks (with red bellies) and females (with swollen bellies).
- All male sticklebacks attacked the model designed to look like a male member of the species.
- This shows that the behaviour is invariant, i.e. all males do it, and it is a strong argument for the behaviour being innate.
Goodall’s Research:
- During the ‘4 year war’ Goodall observed a community
of chimps set about systematically slaughtering all the
members of another group.
- They did this in a pre-meditated and organised fashion, It helps to define aggression and
one that suggested thought and planning had occurred how it occurs with other behaviours.
in order to adhere to their objective.
- This calculated violence had
never before been seen in the It helps us to understand When animal behaviour (aggression)
animal kingdom, it was assumed how aggressive behaviours Ethology studied in a laboratory environment
that this was exclusive to evolved to aid survival. conditions can be highly controlled
humans. and this is not possible with humans.
- This is important because this is
not the kind of behaviour that
the ethological theory would
In animals, aggression is a drive and is hardwired into the
predict.
brain.
He believed that animals have an innate releasing mechanism
(IRM) which was a specific neural circuit that responds to
stimuli in the environment that could be interpreted as
threatening, this is referred to as the sign stimulus.
The Ethological
Explanation of Aggression
Lorenz
The study of animals in their
natural environment.
All animals in the same species, which are called
‘conspecifics’, have the same repertoire of stereotyped
behaviours which occur in specific conditions that do not
An example of a fix
require learning. This means that they are innate.
The innate releasing mechanism (IRM) receives input from the behaviour involvin
environment, such as the presence of a threat. Sensory recognition male stickleback fi
circuits are stimulated by the presence of the sign stimulus. The with the nesting be
IRM communicates with motor control circuits, in the peripheral Establishing territo
nervous system and the FAP is activated. The animal responds important to the sti
stereotypically to this threat and all species respond in the same other male stickleb
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