PRO-SEMINAR: SAMPLE “THOUGHT PAPERS” FROM WINTER 2009

Aggression: Part of the Human Condition? (Dr. Tracey Vaillancourt)
The lecture given by Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt primarily addressed the question “Is aggression part of the human condition?” In short, Dr. Vaillancourt contends that aggression IS part of the human condition. In her lecture, she used three main points, or “clues”, to support the argument that everyone aggresses. She identified prevalence as being the first indicator, citing that aggression is used by too many people (65% of young children) to merely be a product of a few budding psychopaths. She specified the prevalence of bullying when assessed using an inclusive definition (e.g. not merely physical aggression but relational aggression as well). This resulted in bullying rates of approximately 50% and victimization rates of approximately 65%. The second clue Dr. Vaillancourt used to support her argument was the profile of aggression. She used the example of Nelson from The Simpsons to characterize what we stereotype as “the common bully”. She clarified that this characterization is in fact incorrect, and that this type of bully (low status, inarticulate, unattractive etc.) only represents 10% of bullies. The third clue that Dr. Vaillancourt used was experimental studies. She cited the landmark study in social psychology of the ego-threat resulting from positive or negative feedback on a pro-life paper. She also gave evidence from her replication of this study as well as evidence from the Hottie Study. They found a strong moderating effect of narcissism when measuring levels of ego-threat when expressed through aggressive behaviour. Dr. Vaillancourt concluded by answering her question once again: yes, aggression is part of the human condition, but we must learn to control and reduce our aggression.
Some of the major topics that stood out to me from Dr. Vaillancourt’s lecture were the mention of social learning theory, the role of genes and the environment, and the rewarding of aggressive behaviour. Despite the cited 65% heritability load of aggression, I think that social learning theory comes into play a great deal when we are talking about aggression. Richard Tremblay’s longitudinal studies looking at aggression in young males in Quebec have shown the importance and positive implications for the use of early behavioural interventions. These interventions would make use of rewarding pro-social behaviour and discouraging anti-social/aggressive behaviour. In addition to this, the modeling of pro-social behaviour is integral to preventing and/or restructuring learned negative behaviours. Tremblay would likely argue that interventions for childhood aggression should occur (optimally) while the fetus is in utero. Aggression in children has been linked to prenatal factors such as birth resulting from teenage pregnancies, single-parent/“fatherless children”, cognitive deficits resulting from contact with teratogens while in utero (e.g. fetal alcohol syndrome) etc. These prenatal risk factors would contribute to proclivities for aggression. As we remember from abnormal psychology, the diathesis-stress model states that the environment will play a major role in determining whether these proclivities will be expressed or not. This is why social learning theory is important to consider when attempting to understand how to reduce aggressive behaviour. Regardless of whether we have been predisposed to aggression via our genes or the prenatal environment, there is a learning component that plays a crucial role in determining whether that aggression manifests itself in our behaviour.
We live in a culture that often rewards aggressive behaviour (this is generally truer for men than it is for women, as women tend to be penalized and chastised for being aggressive). This is why detecting/assessing psychopathy in non-offender samples is difficult, as society promotes and encourages many psychopathic behaviours, especially in the corporate world (e.g. callousness, instrumental aggression, lack of emotionality, narcissism etc.). Why would people NOT want to be aggressive, if we live in a society that not only condones it, but celebrates it? To make matters worse, there is this “trump card” of attractiveness and status. It is like Dr. Vaillancourt stated, you can get away with murder if you are wealthy, attractive, or a good athlete. Historically and evolutionarily speaking, the use of aggression (proactive and reactive; implicit and explicit; physical and indirect) were likely the adaptive tools that guaranteed success of species and survival of the fittest…is aggression merely a vestigial artefact of a species that has failed to evolve as quickly as its culture or do we need aggression to survive?

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Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt presented some of her research in answer to the question, “Is cruelty a learned behaviour or committed by the cruel at heart”. This question stems from opposing contentions that behaviour is highly heritable and, therefore, cruelty is ‘in the genes’; or that it is observed by children and adopted by them as a successful strategy.
Dr. Vaillancourt identified 3 points to suggest that all people are capable of cruelty and aggression. These were:
• Prevalence. Everyone is cruel or aggressive at some time, particularly as young children. Physical aggression yields to indirect forms as children learn socially acceptable forms of behaviour.
• Profiles of aggressors. The stereotypical ‘thug’ bully represents only 10% of the bullying population. Most bullies show narcissistic traits but are popular and skilled in social interactions. Nonetheless, they seek to establish and preserve a personally advantageous social hegemony.
• Aggressive responses. These can be elicited readily in lab settings, e.g. the essay response study and the ‘Hottie’ study.
Bullying can take three forms; physical, verbal and social. Children’s perceptions of bullying tend to concentrate on physical aggression, but they increase their reporting rate after verbal and social aggression is explained to them. Bullying can occur throughout the lifespan and in any situation including the social and the workplace. It has been suggested that bullying evolved as an adaptive mechanism to maintain social groups and to identify ‘outsiders’, but that social contexts have changed faster than the behaviour.
The examples of aggressive behaviour used situations that seemed familiar to most people, and I was interested to note the audience reaction. The clip of the two children seemed to produce an uncertain response, and I wasn’t convinced that this was a case of childhood aggression or bullying. First, the younger child seemed to be in the position of aggressor, but he did not seem old enough to have the intention to cause harm or to exclude. He just seemed overly curious. Granted, the little girl could have moved, but I can’t see that she was being actively aggressive in not yielding her place. It was mentioned that the adult (audible but out of view) was the father. This could explain why the little girl looked towards his location repeatedly, perhaps in non-verbal requests for him to intervene and assist her. If that is the case, I can’t see how that would fit with this interaction being called aggression or bullying.
Reaction seemed to be fairly unanimous to both the essay evaluation study and the ‘Hottie’ study. These were described as demonstrations of aggressive responses towards potential threats to ego. However, I wondered if the essay response was more a matter of ‘revenge’, and the ‘Hottie’ response was to novelty and violation of the contextual norm. Neither of these situations seemed to indicate that they would involve the repeated and sustained victimisation of an individual.
I also felt that the ‘marking out of a victim’ component of a bullying scenario was missing from the essay and ‘Hottie’ scenarios. This makes me wonder if there may be more than one motive for bullying. One example might be to maintain the status of the bully; but it may be a separate motive to take advantage of the vulnerability of an individual. Now I’ve written that, I’m wondering if the ‘bully’ feels threatened by evident vulnerability; perhaps it resonates too closely to their own fragile self-esteem, which might take the discussion full-circle, back to Baumeister, Boden and Smart’s (1996) amelioration of self-esteem argument mentioned by Dr. Vaillancourt. [Hope I’ve got the reference right!]
In practical terms, how can we promote the reconciliation of the primitive ‘lizard’ brain’s thinking with the requirements of present day social contexts? Dr. Vaillancourt suggested that we need to govern this using the frontal cortex to determine more acceptable behaviour. This might be achieved through:
• Early Childhood Education (ECE) was mentioned as a feature in societies with lower rates of childhood bullying – ECE promotes skills in social interaction, and thus discourages and reduces the need for aggressive behaviours.
• Improved understanding of constructs involved – terms such as ‘popularity’ and ‘bullying’ have been found to mean different things to children and adults (researchers), so more accurate perceptions and knowledge of these behaviours might enable the creation of better targeted strategies to counteract behaviours.
However, if bullying behaviours are really inherent, this provokes two thoughts:
i. They will be difficult to eradicate, and teaching children (and adults) to control them and themselves is the best that can be hoped for.
ii. They will be difficult to respond to effectively, otherwise that would have happened a long time ago.
While it is important to understand the processes and dynamics involved, it is also vital to devise tactics and strategies in response. Currently, most guidelines for children through TV and print media seem to consist of ignoring or reporting incidents. However, vulnerable children may need coaching in ways to respond to bullying. Interventions might assist children through rehearsing ways to prepare themselves to respond, perhaps using humour, recruiting an ally or having the courage to challenge the bully on their behaviour (hard to do if the victim of physical aggression).
Strategies also need to be developed to let persistent bullies gain insight into the distress they cause, without this becoming an exercise in reinforcing their motives. At the same time, research on approaches to address the underlying motives of aggressors may also prove to be effective in counteracting and limiting this behaviour.

First of all, I would like to say that I truly enjoyed the talk this week, and that I think we were lucky to have such a bright researcher (and fantastic speaker) come to do this talk.
So, as you recall, Dr Vaillancourt started her talk by asking the question: is it just the “cruel at heart” who bully? To answer this question she gave evidence coming from three different lines of research in this area. She talked about 1) the prevalence of bullying, 2) the profiles of the people who bully, and 3) the results of social psychology experiments investigating bullying.
Before getting started, Dr V made a quick clarification: while bullying is always aggression, the opposite is not necessarily true. For an aggressive behaviour to be considered bullying, it needs to be 1) intentional, 2) repeated over time, and 3) coming from a situation in which there is an imbalance of power.
When talking about the prevalence of bullying, Dr V mentioned that the “peak” of bullying arises very early on in life, around 30 months. At this point, aggressive and bullying behaviours are actually more typical than atypical, and often consist of physical actions such as hitting and biting. We then see a decline in such forms of aggression as the individual matures, paralleled by an increase in more indirect forms of aggression. Thus, from an early age, aggressive behaviours are normative, and later on, when including all possible forms of direct and indirect aggression, we see that around 50% of children actually do bully. Dr V then reminded us of the “classic bully”, such as Nelson from the Simpsons. She emphasized the point that while this character might come to mind when we hear of bullying, he actually only represents 10% of children, far off from the 50% of children who are known to bully in some form or other. She informed us that some of the differences between the Nelson bullies and the regular bullies may include difference in the amount and the types of “power” children have within their groups. Finally, Dr V mentioned several studies in which she was easily able to elicit bullying behaviours in experimental conditions.
So, when taking these findings together, it is clear that it is not only the cruel at heart who bully, and that the “real bullies” (vs the over-represented classic bullies) are indeed ordinary individuals. It also seems that the answer to the title of her talk – aggression: part of the human condition? – may be “yes”. Certainly, Lorenz would agree with that (even though he looked at it from a completely different perspective). Dr V herself also told us that it was likely that such behaviours may have had an evolutionary purpose, but also may reflect the fact that we “have a primitive brain in a modern society”. And this is the part that leaves me wondering.
One of the cutest things we see in young rats is play fighting. I do NOT mean to draw a parallel between play fighting and bullying, I think it would be superficial, and I don’t have the knowledge or background in social aggression research to do that. I am also not talking about extreme cases of bullying. But I know that at least in rats, there comes a point in development where the animal has to learn a complex set of social rules/conducts that are eventually going to become useful, and necessary. They learn different strategies that can be used to establish a social hierarchy, strategies that more than often aim to minimize the chances of an actual fight. Intuitively, I would think that in SOME situations, kids get teased or bullied because they employ strategies that are maladaptive in our society (like crying whenever you don’t get what you want, or like dressing like a “hottie” in a situation where it is typically not socially accepted). In SOME situations, I would also think that the kids that get bullied because of these strategies, or because, well, it’s Wednesday and on Wednesday we all hate Katie (ie: just because), will eventually learn to develop strategies to counteract that kind of social aggression, which is likely to show up at other time points in their lives as well. And for these reasons, I would argue that bullying may have a very contemporary purpose, because we DO live in a world where the social rules are numerous, complex, and situation-dependent. Having that said, I do agree that bullying should still be a concern to us, given that in some cases, it does indeed lead to dramatic consequences, and this is why I think research in this area is highly important.
Finally, I was troubled by the brief description that Dr V gave of the possible neural correlates of bullying (especially when it comes to the Nelson 10%), more specifically, that there might be a dysregulation in the normal inhibition of the amygdala from the prefrontal cortex. I find this explanation a bit too simplistic to really explain the complexity of what was discussed in the talk, along with the idea of McLean’s triune brain from which the so-called reptilian brain comes from. On top of that, let’s not forget that the PFC is not actually mature until adulthood – we can then wonder if we actually have a dysregulation per se, or a simply a delay in its normal maturation process.

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The Perils of Trait Perfectionism and Perfectionistic Self-presentation (Dr. Gordon Flett)

The talk titled, ‘the perils of trait perfectionism and perfectionistic self presentation’ by Dr. Gordon Flett was an eye opener in terms of the downfalls of perfectionism. Dr. Flett discussed the different forms of perfectionism, the relationship between perfectionism and well being, the costs and benefits of perfectionism, as well as a brief mention of potential causes of perfectionism.
In terms of defining and measuring perfectionism Dr. Flett discussed the movement from unidimensional to mulitdimensional scales. He was involved in creating a 3 factor perfectionism scale which assesses socially-oriented perfectionism (e.g., high self standards, all or nothing approach, driven to achieve goals, workaholic), other-oriented perfectionism (e.g., high standards for others, highly narcissistic, fault finders who blame others, creators of interpersonal conflict), and socially prescribed perfectionism (belief that other demand perfection from them, sense of helplessness in pleasing others). Flett later added an additional separate factor called perfectionist self presentation. High scorers on this factor strive to achieve the perfect image using strategies to promote oneself, while avoiding displays and discoveries of their imperfections. Correlates of this later factor include bulimic symptoms, thoughts about cosmetic surgery, personality dysfunction, and negative attitudes toward help-seeking.
Dr. Flett went on discuss a number of important findings in terms of the well-being (both mental and physical) of perfectionists, with a focus on persons scoring high on perfectionist self presentation (PSP). PSP has been linked with clinical depression through the experience of shame, post partum depression (pressure to appear like the perfect parent), speech anxiety (related to negative invasive thoughts and audience anxiety), stress (decreased recovery after stressful event/illness), chrons and colitis, as well as cardiac difficulties.
As perfectionism is viewed by many as a double edged sword, or even a good thing, Dr. Flett gave a brief discussion regarding the possible balance of costs and benefits of perfectionism. Some have suggested that perfectionism may lead to greater performance. Dr. Flett found mixed results in terms of the benefits of perfectionism, such that some studies have found that it is related to lower performance and lower quality, while others have found that perfectionism is related to great success (e.g., strong achievements in school) but also great distress (anorexia, sadness, anxiety) or a negative reaction to success (still feeling it was not good enough, e.g., A versus A+).
Finally in terms of potential causes of perfectionism, Dr. Flett named many of the usually players: parental influence, social reaction model (perfectionism is a response to a harsh or chaotic childhood), and the social environment/experiences (cultural milieu promotes perfectionism). Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been suggested as one avenue in which perfectionists may learn to cope. CBT directs attention toward the known correlates of perfectionism such as depression, anxiety, maladaptive coping, self-blame and rumination.
I found Dr. Flett’s talk on trait perfectionism to be extremely thorough. I understand that due to time constraints not all aspects of perfectionism could be covered but I was thankful that he did come full circle and covered the “What can we do now?” aspect of problematic perfectionism. Much of personality research can be disheartening in that because of the focus on traits (consistent across time) one feels that there is really nothing that will budge one’s overall level /score on a trait. The problem with personality traits are that on average one will score about the same on a particular trait (consistent overtime – so always the same overall level of perfectionism), but personality (as once thought) is not consistent across situations. Although Dr. Flett did not mention this, I was left with the impression that persons scoring high on perfectionism are likely to experience this trait in most situations. Personality research has moved beyond the focus on trait consistency and instead has put a larger emphasis on the interaction between personality and the situation. This might be described in terms of an “if...and ....then” statement. For instance, IF I am a perfectionist, AND I value academia, THEN I will reveal my trait of perfectionism in the academic setting. In contrast, IF I am a perfectionist, AND I don’t value cleaning my home, THEN I will not reveal my perfectionism in terms of housekeeping. Thus, much of our behaviour and cognitions are both personality and situation dependent. Dr. Flett suggested potential benefits of CBT to address overall levels of depression, anxiety, rumination and self blame. Instead I suggest that the therapeutic focus be taken away from the consequence of perfectionism (depression, anxiety, etc: if these are indeed consequences rather than just correlates) and move the focus to a more pre-emptive place. We know that overall levels of perfectionism are likely to remain constant over time, but in addressing the AND (what it is a person values and why) we may be able to decrease the number of situations in which perfectionism is revealed. This would at the same time decrease the consequences of perfectionism (anxiety, self blame etc) as this trait would not be displayed as often.