Aggressive cues in aggressive behavior and hostility catharsis.

Anger arousal creates a readiness to act aggressively but suitable cues—stimuli associated with the present or previous anger instigators —presumably are necessary if aggressive responses are actually to occur. In cases of hostility displacement, as others have proposed, the target evokes aggressive responses from an angered person. Aggressive cues in the angered person's thoughts or in the external situation activate an aggressive response sequence which does not attain completion until the anger instigator is injured. Preventing the completion of the activated sequence heightens the arousal state and this (a) increases the strength of any subsequent aggressive responses, (b) raises the level of tension experienced by the person. Completing the ongoing aggressive sequence by inflicting injury often leads, in the absence of guilt or anxiety, to a pleasurable reduction in the experienced tension. Few observations in the behavioral sciences are as trite as the one boldly proclaiming that an individual's actions are a product of both environmental conditions and internal states. But although we are often told that B = f (P,E), this proposition is sometimes unduly neglected by students of motivation. Even when it is not forgotten, the basic formulation is usually only paraphrased, and we are not given any specific statement as to the manner in which environmental stimuli and internal states interact to determine the direction and intensity of the person's strivings. Such a neglect seems to be particularly characteristic of writers in the field of aggressive behavior. The present paper will at