Angry Aggression Among the “Truly Disadvantaged”*

Violent incidents arising out of trivial conflicts and insults have been explained by subcultural theories of violence, but empirical support for those theories has been lacking. Recent cognitively oriented research on anger and aggression is combined in this analysis with W. Wilson's (1987) arguments about the “truly disadvantaged” to revise those theories. An individual‐level theory explains the violent incidents, and an aggregate level theory explains the distribution of those incidents among social groups. A subculture of angry aggression arises under conditions of social isolation, when multiple feedback loops result in concentration effects.